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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 












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NEW EDITION-ENLARGED. 



^,^- 



RAND,M?NALLYaCD? 




lUFOHNIA, 

Arizdna, New Mexico, 

Cdldrado, 

Kansas. 



LOMBARD INVESTMENT COMPANY. 



CAPITAL, 
SURPLUS, 



$1,150,000.00. 
$400,000.00. 



13 Sears BiiildinK, Boiiiton, Mass., I 150 Broadway, New York t'ity. 
133 South 4th Street, I'kiladrlphia, I 150 Leadeuhall 8t., Loudou, 
Kansas Cliy, Missouri. 



Six per Cent. First Mortgage Real Estate Coupon Bonds, 

secured on both City and Farm Property, worth three 

times the amount loaned. Both Principal and 

interest Guaranteed. Seven per Cent. 

Mortgages, Unguaranteed. 



Conservative investors will flud sufficient reason for the great strength of the guaran- 
teed securities of this old reliable company in the followint^ f.icts: 

18t. Over 30 years' experience of its management. 2d. A guaranty of over $2,500,000.00 
against loss, besides the real estate mortgage. 3d. Record of management tested by 
every emergency liable to occur. 4th. A stronger financial condition to day than ever 
before in its history. 5th. The unmatched list of over 300 New Englaud and Philadelphia 
stockholders. 6th. Over 50 Savings Banks and over 200 institutions hold loans made 
through this company. 

Report of the Bank Commit-sioners of the State of Connecticut on this company's con- 
dition, in compliance with the stringent act of the legislature of the State of Connecticut, 
in effect June 1, 1887, will be gent on application. 



f[atioM 



©' 



-THE- 



it oi Kansas flilii 



KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI. 



J. S. CHICK, President. "W. H. CHICK, Vice-President. "W. J. ANDERSON, Cashier. 
F. N. CHICK, Ass't Cashier. "W. F. SARGENT, Second Ass't Cashier. 



CAPITAL, $1,000,000.- 
* SURPLUS 



* 



AND UNDIVIDED 
PROFITS, 



$280,000. 



Transapts a General Banki ng Business 

Having a thorouerhly organized correspondence throughout the country^ and the closest 

cersonal attention being given to all matters entrusted to it, this Bank sohcits 

thebusinesof Banks, Bankers, Corporations, 1 irms and Individuals, 

and guarantees entire satisfaction to all its patrons. 

^-^CCOajVTg RECEIVED OJM TflE PO^T LIBERAL TERJslS.-J:- 

Particular attention paid to the business of correspondent-, the interest of all cur pat- 
rons carefully guarded and promptly served. Corresfiondence invited. Inquiries, wtiether 
from regu.lar correspondents or not. receive prompt attention and are carefully answered. 



SAFE INVESTMENTS. 

For the purpose of making you some m:.ney, we wish to call your 
attention to Kansas City, Kas. The f^c; is established, that the portion 
of Kansas City west of the State line is better adapted for wholesale and 
manufacturing pu.pDses than any other portion of the City. That at 
present there is business sufficient upon the west sida to more than furnish 
one-half of the clearances of Kansas City. That your money invested here 
will be a sure source of revenue to you. That we handle and own many of 
the finest properties in this part of the City. Among them are the additions of 

BRIGHTON HILL, -^ 

SILVER PLACE, 

ORCHARD ADDITION, 
m and BRIDGE PLACE. 

We w^ill take pleasure in answering any correspondenc3 regardino- 
them. 

We have opportunities for loaning money at good rates, and upon 
flrst-class property. 

We refer you to the First National Bank of Kansas City, Kas. 

Yours, 

FORD &, TROUP, 

548 Minnesota Avenue, Kansas City, Kas. 



L. H. WOOD. W. L. WOOD. 



'•9 



L. H. Wood & Co. 

Real Estate, Loan 

INVESTMENT BROKERS. 

Choice Residence and Business Property. 
Acre Tracts for Platting. 

►^Safe Investments for Non-Residents. -i^^ 

CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED. 

L. H. WOOD & CO., 

509 Minnesota Avenue. Telephone 1530. 

KANSAS CITY, KANSAS. 



T. F. WILLIS, 

President. 



W. H. HALL, 

Vice Fre^idciit. 



SELBY JONES, 

Sec. and Treas. 



HALL & WILLIS HARDWARE CO., 







HARDWARE 

cut^lIeiry. 

SI»ECI^Ii .A.a?TE]SrTI03Sr (3-IVElT TO ]yt.A.IXj OI2,I3EK.S. 

TINNERS' STOCK. 

KANSAS CITY, MO. 



Trumbull Reynolds Sl Allen, 
SEEDSMEN, 



JOBBERS IN 

Clover, Timothy, Blue Grass, Orchard Grass, Red Top, Millet, Hun- 
garian, Seed Potatoes, Onion Sets, Seed Grains, 
Garden Seeds, Tree Seeds, etc. 

"Write for Catalogue and Prices. 

THE KANSAS CITY STOCK YARDS 

Are by far the most commodious and best appointed in the Missouri Valley, with ample capacity 

for fecdini?, weighinfj and shipping Cattle, Hogs, Sheep, H rses and Mules. They are 

planked throughout. No yards are better wate'ed, and in none l3 there a belter 

sysiem of drainage. The fact that 

HIGHER PRICES ARE REALIZED 

Here tl.an in the East is due to the location at these yards of eitrht Packing Houses, with an 
aggregate daily capacity of 3,30ii cattle and '2T.'-'00 hogs, and the regular attendance of sharp, com- 
petitive buyers for the packing houses of Oniatia, 'Jhicago, St Louis, Indianapolis i incinnati, 
New T. rk and Boston. 

All the tliiiteen roadsrunnlng into Kansas City have direct conneclion with the Yards, afford- 
ing the best accoiiiniodatinn for Stock coming from 1 he preat grazng grounds of all the Western 
Stat<-« and Territories, and also for stock destined for Eastern Markets. 

The business of the Yards is done systematically and with the utmost promptness, so that 
there ia no deltiy. and no clas)ilng, and Stockmen have found here, and will continue tj find, that 
they gel all Ihei'r stock Is worth with the least possible delay. 
C. F. MORSE, E. E. RICHARDSON, H. P. CHILD, 

General Manager. Treas. and Sec'y. Superintendent. 



THE LARGEST SCALE MAP EVER MADE. 

WE HAVE JUST COMPLETED A NEW 

SHIPPER'S RAILROAD MAP OF THE SOUTHWEST, 



(SCALE: EIGHT MILES TO ONE INCH. 

Lines Printed inlSeparate Colors. All Railroad Stations Shown.' . ISend 
for Descriptive Circular. 

RAND, McNALLY & CO., 

148 Monroe Street, CHICAGO. 

CALVIN XOOIMEY, 



COR. TENTH AND GRAND AVE., 

M'f'r of the Celebmled 

"TOOMEY" 
SPORTING 

VEHICLES 

Ot every Description, 

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI 




MANUFACTURER: 

Toomey Road Wagons. 
Toomey Skeleton Wagons. 
Toomey Track Sulkies. 
Toomey Sulky Cushions with 

Weight Pockets. 
Toomey Speed Poles. 
T-oniey Road Carts. 
Toomey Pole Carts. 
Toomey r>reaklng Carts. 
Toomey Pole Jogging Carts. 
Toomey Jogging Carts. 



B. F. BERRY, 

][eIl ^ sfTfE IIealer; 

505 1-2 MINNESOTA AVE., 

Ki^NS-A.S CITY, K^ISrS. 



I have Extra Choice Bargains in all parts of the City, the Beautiful Addi- 
tions, and Wyandotte County. Lots in 

HUSTED & BERRY'S ADDITION, 

Near Elevated Rail Road, for only $30 per foot. Money Loaned— Houses for Rent— Improved 

and Unimproved Land iu Kansas and siirronnding States, for sale or exchange. Refers 

to the Banks of the City. Twenty Years" Experience in the Business. 

This City will have 1 00,000 People in 5 Years. 




HOI^EL BRUNSWICK. 

CORNER BROADWAV AND I Ith STREET, KANSAS CITY, MO. 

This new Hotei is rrovicled -with, all modem conveniences. Passenger Elevator, Fire 
Escapes, and Fire Alarms la every room: heated by steam tbroughout. Location the 
beet, one block from Coates' Opera House : cable and street cars pass the door from Union 
Depot and all parts of the City, and is justly regarded the best hotel in the City. 

American Flan : Terms $3.00 to $5.00 per day. E. H. HAYES, Prop'r. 



.Rand, McNally & Co.'s 



NEW 



OVERLAND GUIDE 



PACIFIC COAST. 



CALIFORNIA, 

ARIZONA, NEW MEXICO, COLORADO 
AND KANSAS. 



/ 



By James W. Steele. ^V^'^cO?' '"' 






CHICAGO: 

Rand, McNally &. Company, Publishers, 

148, 150, 152 AND 154 MONROE STREET, and 
323 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
1888. 



Lies immediately West of the State line dividing Kansas and Missouri, 

The \mm ^M ^toc\ Yard^, 

ARMOUB, FOWLER, KINGAN, SWIFT, ^ 

© MORRIS S BUTIS. AND ULCUTT 

i»aok:iino houses. 

The Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific Railroad Shops, and a host of smaller 
Manufactories and Shops. 

Is growing more rapidly than any City in the State. "Will very soon be 

the Largest City, Numerically, as it is now in importance, 

in Kansas. Has in operation the only 

ELEVATED ROAD 

Outside of New York City, a first class Cable Road, with several more in 
course of construction. For Safe, Seciire and 

«<PROFITABLE • mVESTMEIMTS>o 

There can be no equal to the opportunities afforded in 

'K%w>W> City, K^nsh?- 



JAKTES D. HXJSXED, 

Real Estate Dealer 

1st National Bank Building, 

KANSAS CITY, KANSAS. 

American Bank Building, - - KANSAS CITY, MO. 



Copyright, 1888. l).y Rand, McNally & Co. 



1 State 




Map of the United States. 




CVTTfWl. 1«» •» «"^- "'^"^ * Co ,. MM. 



NTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface 3-5 

The Journey : 

Kansas City — Scenes at Union Depot — The Cit)''s History and 
Peculiar Features — Westport Landing — The Trail — Growth and 
Trade of Kansas City — Railroads, etc 7-17 

Kansas : 

Some Statistics — The Pawnees — The Kaws — Historical Notes — The 
Arkansas Valley — First Male White Child Born in the State — The State 
University — Lawrence — Topeka — Some Reminiscences — Emporia — 
Climatic Changes, etc 18-47 

Colorado : 

History — Topography — Bent"s Fort — The Indians — Trinidad — Raton 

Tunnel — Mountain Scenery and Health Resorts — The Staked Plain. . 4S-64 

Pan-Handle of Texas : 

Location and Peculiarities — The Cattle Baron — His Anomalous and 
Lawless Position — The Cowboy 65-70 

New Mexico : 

Its Antiquity — Still Full of Ancient and Picturesque Nooks — A Land 
ot Health Resorts, Beautiful Valleys, and Lofty Mountains — Descrip- 
tion of the Territory — Topography — History — Some of Its Native 
Inhabitants — The Pueblos — Silent Ruins — Raton — Las Vegas — 
Glorieta Pass — Old Pecos Church — Apache Cafion — Starvation Peak 
— Albuquerque — Laguna — La Mesa Encantada 71-100 

Arizona : 

Its Magnitude — Undeveloped Wealth — Desolate Appearance — The 
Mojave Desert — Water-Worn Rocks — The Sand-Blast — Wingate — 
Navajo Church — Rio Puerco Valley — Isolated Rocks — Holbrook — 
Flagstaff — The Cliff Dwellings — Petrified Forests — The Natural 
Bridge — The Painted Desert — Grand Caiion of the Colorado — The 
Needles 101-126 

California : 

The Entrance to the State Dismal and Uninviting — Barstow — Topog- 
raphy and Clim.ate — Valleys and Mountains 127-143 



THE LARGEST MANUFACTURING CITY IN THE WEST. 



In the year 1887 Colonel Leavenworth, of the Tliii-d U. H. Infantry, 
selected the fort on the north of this city as the most suitable place for a 
Western post. Fort Leavenworth, which is named after the Colonel, is 
now the most important Government fort in the country, being situated 
in the geographical center of the United States. It is gradually becoming 
the central depot for military stores. A militai-y school has been estab- 
lished for yoimg oflBcere. which will soon have a i-eputation equal to that 
of West Point. The Government Reservation consists of 7,000 aci^sof 
land, barracks, officers' quartei-s. the D. S. military prison and hospital. 
The department is under the command of General Wesley Merritt, and 
comprises the States of Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Arkansas, New 
Mexico, Utah and Indian Tenitory. The fort and military school are 
under the command of General A. D. McCook. The city of Leavenworth 
was located in June, 1S54, and is the oldest city in the State of Kansas. 
During the war I.#avenworth became the shipping point for the Westoni 
States ; people from every part flocked to the city on account of its pro- 
tection from Fort Leavenworth. After the war the city was mainly sup- 
I>orted by the fort, on the north, and the State penitentiary, on the south; 
the amount of money spent by these two institutions was sufficient to 
support a city of 15,000 people. In 1S70, Professor Hawn induced a few 
friends to sink a coal mine, giving it, as his belief, that coal would be 
found beneath the city. After about ten yeai-s of pei-scvrrriiirr-, .-im^ flu:- 




organization of several 
feet. The company was 
put on a paying basis, 
present, being made fr( 



^(jmpanies. coal was reached at the depth of 710 
bought up by capitalists, and, fifteen yeais ago, 
The above illustration shows the mine as it is at 
m a photograph ; it is one of the best equipped 



in America, and gives emidoyment to 50u men. Theie are now three 
mines, giving employment to 1,100 men, and lifting to the surface every 
day 29,000 bushels of coal. By actual tests it is now known that the city 
of Leavenwoi-th stands on three veins of rich bituminous coal, being 84, 




■26 and 2s inches thick each, and the lowest veiu only 1,U22 feet ill 
depth. From a careful calculation made by experts it is ascertained that 
there is 1,830,000,000 tons of coal— as much as would supply the whole of 
the United States for twelve years. The demand for Leavenworth ceil 
has become so great that thousands of car loads could have been sold 
last winter. Seven new companies have been organized, with ample 
capital, and by next year it is expected that ten mines will be in operation. 
Five yeai-s ago real estate had very little value. In 1885 the transfers 
amounted to $ti84,93i.47 ; in 1886 they amoimted to $1,666,643.91 ; and 
in 1887 they amounted to 15,739,256.35; and now there is agieat demand 
for both city and country property. During the last five years the popula- 
tion has increased 16,000. Three years ago the Government selected this 
city for the Wostcnl SoUliei-s' Home. The city gave 620 acres of land, 



and now, on the south of the city, stands one of the largest and best 
Soldiers' Homes in America, and at the present time 1,920 old veterans 
are living in it. Geologists believe that natural gas exists below the city, 
and at present a well is being drilled to ascertain it such is the fact. Last 
year three new railroads were budt into the city,— the Leavenworth, 
Northern & Southern; the Wyandotte & Northwestern, and the Bapid 
Transit. This year the following roads are aiTanging to come : the 
Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the 
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul ; and the Leavenworth & Denver Air 
Line. 

Leavenworth is the largest city in the State of Kansas. Leavenworth 
is the largest manufactuiing city in the West. Leavenworth is the great- 
est coal center of the State and the entire West. Leavenworth has more 
wealthy citizens and fewer mortgages on her property, she has a better 
class of mechanics, pays more money in wages, and has cheaper real 
estate than any city of its size in America. At hei- present rate of pro- 
gress, she will have 100,000 people in lees than ten yeate. Her railroad 
facilities ai-e equal to the best. A splendid system of water-works*, 
unequaled sewerage. The healthiest city in the Union, accoi-ding to 




population. Excellent schools and church privUeges ; the best banking 
facilities ; the finest parks and drives. 

Parties wanting information about this great manufacturing center 
should write to H. MILES MOORE, Sccrotaiy Board of Trade, 

Leavenworth, Kansas 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Southern California : page 

Its Past and Present — Equable Temperature — History of Its Discovery 
and Occupancy — Annexation to the United States — The Colorado 
Desert — The Valleys of San Gabriel and San Bernardino — What Irri- 
gation Does for the Soil — The Charm that Hovers Over the Countrj^ 
— A Land for the Wealthy, the Indolent, and the Sick — The Poor 
Man Has No Business There 144-167 

Climate : 

Variations of Climate Governed by Topographical Features — ^Warm 
Days and Cool Nights — The Californian Climatic Puzzle — Tables of 
Comparisons and Mean Temperatures — Causes of California's many 
Variations of Climate — Effects of Altitude and Configuration upon the 
Climates of the smaller Valleys 167-182 

In General : 

The Mojave River and Cajon Pass — Routes through California — -The 
Yosemite Valley and the Big Tree Groves — The Sequoia the Last of 
the Race of Giant Trees — Peculiarities in the Flora and Farna of the 
Pacific Coast — Absence of Eastern Varieties of Plants and Animals — 
The Tarantula, the Mosquito and the Flea — Scorpions — Snakes 183-192 

As A Health Resort 193-196 

APPENDIX. 

Itinerary . 

From Kansas City to Los Angeles, San Diego, or San Francisco. . . . 197-198 

Spanish Geographical Names 199-212 



Preface. 




fHIS GUIDE is intended for 
the convenience of those per- 
sons who, wishing to make a jour- 
ney to California, find their most 
convenient route to He through 
Kansas City. 

Such persons would live as far 
south as Memphis, for instance, and 
as far north as Chicago. There 
are many thousands of these annu- 
ally; for California, and especially 
Southern California, seems to have 
become a subject in which a great 
portion of the American people 
are interested. Why this is so may "^ir^^i^^ 
in some measure appear in the ^" 

following pages. There is no country whose history is more curious or whose 
changes have been more astonishing. Simply as a study; as a chapter out of mod- 
ern American history; as an example of the results wrought by steam, water and 
human industry, — California, upper, middle or southern, is worth some attention, 
if not very careful consideration. 

This narrative will also include a glance, as careful as space will admit of, of 
what lies between; — Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. All these that 
have not already come to the front in public estimation are rapidly coming, and all 
are interested from at least one standpoint ; — that which regards them as the seat of 
future empire, the homes of countless thousands of people who will be all Ameri- 
cans, all speaking the same language, wearing the same dress, following the same 
customs, and under whose touch every desert will yet bloom, every mountain nook 
become a home. 

There are many trans Continental lines. They all offer their attractions and 
advantages. But the tide of travel has for the past year or two sought the most 

(3) 



4 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

direct lines westward, and the shortest is the one whose features are of the most 
interest to the average traveler, other things being equal, and that is the route 
described in the following pages, so far, at least, as to Southern California. A guide 
of travel that attempts a description of all possible routes at once, jumps here and 
there without sequence or order, confusing the reader, to whom time-tables are 
always accessible, and adding little or nothing to the interest of any one route. 

Nearly all guide-books are so made, and nearly all are, in this regard at least, 
unsatisfactory. An attempt is here made to depart from this ancient plan, and to 
give the reader a consecutive story, from day to day, of at least one route. It is 
not an advertisement, but is printed and sold for the usual publisher's reasons. The 
first editions have offered encouragement for the project of not only reprinting it, 
but re writing it. The changes of two years have been like those of a fairy tale, and 
an attempt will be made in these pages to overtake them. 

But this is a journey over mountain and plain, over granite, lava and sage, through 
a country which changes in its industrial features almost under the traveler's eye. 
It crosses mountain ranges almost incomparable in beauty and vastness, and wide 
plains, where the rim of the horizon is but a pale mist against the arching sky. It 
includes the homes of a civilization older than any American historj', yet where the 
original inhabitants still live and toil, and it traverses the still plainly visible re- 
mains of a civilization yet older far, at which modern science and investigation make 
only plausible guesses and derive only possible inferences. Specimens of the races 
that the lapse of time has not affected, and whose ideas and ancestry are alike 
prehistoric, gaze listlessly at you and your train as you pass by. The most un- 
appreciative traveler, making this journey for the first time, must at least perceive 
that he is under strange skies. There are new sensations. There is a foreign feel- 
ing. Some effort is n-^cessary to convince oneself that this is still the domain over 
which floats the familiar flag; that it is still an integral part of the mightiest empire 
the world has ever seen. 

A long journey by rail is usually only a respectable mode of solitary confine- 
ment for as long as it lasts. There are only glimpses caught of the country by 
daylight, and one grows tired because he does not know anything of the history, 
traditions or industries of the country he is traversing. He does not know what to 
look for, and all his information must usually be obtained from what is termed a 
" folder"; a monotonous list of stations and distances that does not even name the 
country in which one may chance to be. 

Otherwise he must obtain information from some other form of railway adver- 
tising, and in this he puts so many grains of salt that he may usually be said not 
to believe it at all. 



PREFACE. 



Though no guide was ever more than partially successful ; though all items of 
interest can not be included; this little volume is intended, as far as possible, to 
cover these deficiencies. It covers a long distance, and ends at last upon the shores 
of that boundless waste of waters that, to one accustomed to seeing the ocean face 
him the other way, seems the end of all things. 

It ends in a countrj- that is as yet an enigma to itself. Southern California is an 
Eden that has sprung up out of a soil that looks like concrete, and that fifteen years 
a^o was one of the most hopeless of the foreordained and irredeemable deserts. 
One can not believe, amid the scenes that lie around its gateway, that nestled here is 
the garden of the United States; that it is Summer all the year; where roses and 
castor-beans alike take upon themselves the similitude of trees, and where the fruits 
and flowers of tropical islands, and curious perennials from across the seas, flourish 
.better than at home. 




OVERLAND GUIDE. 




Hi =» 




HE 'eURNEY. 



fiHE beginning is at a place worth more than a casual mention. 
Kansas City is one of the towns that began in time, and 
established a Union depot. For some years now, and since 
the tide of immigration began in earnest, this has been almost a 
depot for the Union. The crowds that have of late years gone out 
to people that God-forsaken desert which now produces its hundreds 
of thousands of bushels of wheat and corn, have mostly come stream- 
ing through the narrow gateway of the Union depot at Kansas 
City. 

Every traveler now sees this celebrated spot at its best, if its best 
is when it is liveliest. Two or three times every day, for two hours 
at a time, it is Pandemonium of a rather pleasing type. There is 
a vast crowd that is mostly American, with a sprinkling of every 
nationality. Waiting-rooms for both sexes are full, and a small 
army of both sexes and all ages is marching back and forth outside. 
It is a human ant-hill. Everybody is on business of a puzzling 
kind. They are all away from home, hundreds of them for the first 
time, and unfamiliar with the great how-to-do-it in the way of tickets^ 
trunks, trains, direction, distance, locality and time. Counter res- 
taurants are confronted by hungry rows, some of the people having 
on overcoats, and some linen dusters, thus showing their various 

(7) 



« OVERLAND GUIDE. 

conceptions of climate, and the wide-apart localities from whence 
they have come. 

There is an expression of resignation on the faces of some, of per- 
fect weariness on the countenances of others, and of uncertainty in 
the demeanor of most. For a dozen trains are making up. Long 
lines of cars stand waiting, so arranged as to be all accessible, and 
into these the crowd is slowly percolating. Policemen in gray, 
armed with patience and an unusual fund of information instead of 
clubs, are kept very busy. The trains are all headed to the East or 
to the West ; the one with its headlight toward the setting sun, the 
other looking back toward where most of this company came from, 
and where many a homesick one doubtless wishes he was again. 

This scene changes daily in a certain sense, for if you come again 
to-morrow at the same hour you will. see the same crowds, the same 
hurrying, anxious throng, but not a single person you ever saw 
before. They will have passed hence as entirely and completely as 
though yesterday were a quarter of a cent iry ago. They are gone 
toward the four winds, and will never come again. It is a daily 
gathering of that innumerable and various company whose fixed 
purpose is a new home. Old places and associations have seen 
them for the last time. The great country to the westward swallows 
them up. It evei. in a great measure changes their characters. It 
moulds their interests, tastes, hopes and inclinations. It makes 
them forget all they have deemed most worthy of remembrance, and 
teaches them new themes. The gigantic growth of beech or oak to 
which they have been accustomed is exchanged for the treeless 
prairie where the nodding yellow sunflower is the highest growth, and 
they are not astonished. A quiet country neighborhood or little 
town, where every man knew the genealogy of every other, and 
there has been no change within memory, is given away forever for a 
land of booms and beginnings, and there is no surprise. This power 
of the far West to educate people is one of the curious things. To 
the old time westerner it invests this crowd with a peculiar interest. 



KANSAS CITY. 9 

Illinois and Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania, have lost these 
men and women as irrevocably as if they were dead. They will 
soon cease even to talk about the old homes. It is true ; — they will 
not come back. 

It may be at ten o'clock in the morning, or the same hour at night. 
In either case Kansas City — the city itself — is invisible. It is a queer 
spot in which to build a town, and, like all other cities of importance, it 
was not built — it grew. The fate that makes them does not wait 
upon the intentions and tha designs of men. It is a place of steep 
river bluffs. It is all up-and-down. Some of the principal streets have 
been cut through high banks of clay, leaving houses perched airily 
seventy or a hundred feet above the roadway. It is a place where 
cows used to fall out of pasture and break their necks, and where 
one's door-yard may be as dangerous as the brink of Niagara. Yet 
it is destined beyond doubt to become, if it be not now, the com- 
mercial capital of a great valley. 

Its beginnings are as of yesterday. Within the memory of many 
of its citizens, it was but Westport Landing — a place where steam- 
boats pushed their noses into the muddy banks of the Missouri and 
were made fast to a tree. In those days there was one long, steep 
road up the bank to the top of the hill, and on the hill there were 
some dilapidated warehouses, a store or two, and the usual rough 
accompaniments of the Western trading and freighting post. All 
this was no longer ago than 1855-60. A little later, Leavenworth was 
conceded to be the metropolis, with St. Joseph as something of a 
rival. Something happened ; nobody knows precisely what, per- 
haps ; and the place began to grow. It was the bridge over the Mis- 
souri ; it was a caprice of the railroads ; it was natural situation. 
Nobody would ever enquire what it was, but for the wonder of a 
phenomenal growth, and they will soon cease to enquire at all. 

There is one curious thing. A great, growing, beef-and-corn pro- 
ducing State like Kansas, could not control the destinies of any city 
of her preference on her own soil. She has poured her trade into 



10 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



the lap of a Missouri town, notwithstanding that the two States 
have a grudge against each other almost as rancorous as a Kentucky 
family vendetta. The town is but just far enough within the line to 
induce the belief that it is a curious and an unfair thing that a Kansas- 
made city should stand on Missouri soil. But the inexorable State 
Line intervenes despite all sentiment. The cause of the feeling 
between these two States is a matter of history. It belongs to that 
time which now seems so far in the past ; " before the War." 
Descending through at least one generation, it is now but a remi- 




Camping Freighters. 



niscence. But it is a vivid one. The rights which the young men 
of Missouri trampled in the brown Kansas dust have long since 
triumphed. There are no slaves, and there is no slave territory. 
There is no cause of quarrel, yet for many years Missouri has been 
the bridge and Kansas City the gateway, by which more than a 
million people have passed into Kansas. That is simply another 
instance of a drift toward greatness for which no adequate cause can 
be assigned. For Missouri herself, with all her political offenses 



KANSAS CITY. 11 

against her sister on her head, is still one of the most splendidly 
equipped in natural resources of all the galaxy of States. 

But the old times were the romantic and interesting ones for Kan- 
sas City. The stranger who visits the place, and takes the pains to 
ride up the hill, or through it, on a cable car, will see from the 
elevation a fair country of hill and wood. There is nothing wild or 
strange about it. It is old, refined, cultivated. Let him imagine 
these hills as they were but yesterday. Gaunt and long-horned oxen 
wandering over them, but lately released from the yokes they had 
worn over a thousand miles of mountain and plain from a country 
as far and fabled as Cathay. There were men there such as civil- 
ization does not produce, bronzed, bearded, wide-hatted, swagger- 
ing. They were the typical frontiersmen whose shades now linger 
in song and story. From every ravine and hill-side arose little thin 
blue columns of camp-fire smoke. There was whiskey-merriment, 
shouting, grotesque dancing, and the popping of enormous whips. 
For this lonely and most unprepossessing river-landing was to these 
men high civilization, [t was indeed, after all the lonely reaches of 
Llano Estacado ; after days of wind-swept silence and nights of watch- 
ing ; after the weary tramp through aland that held no human habita- 
tion ; after months of wandering where countless herds of buffalo 
blocked the trails ; after hunger and thirst and Indian-fighting, a 
full measure of civilization. 

For Westport Landing was the beginning of one of the great 
^' Trails," one end of which must of necessity be more or less civil- 
ized after the fashion of those days. 

A " Trail " is a curious thing. The word is one of the most com- 
mon in both western and eastern literature now, and frequently 
requisite in ordinary conversation. Yet it now has a meaning so 
far in the past that the first significance is hardly thought of. 

It may mean, but does not always, a road. At first it never did. 
A trail was a path, winding away crookedly and endlessly, leading 
somewhere, but never definitely and certainly. Ages before America 



12 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

was discovered by Europeans the aborigines of the country had 
paths through the woods and swamps, across the plains and over 
the mountain ranges, crossing zones and climates, and reaching to 
the utmost verge of the land from Great Bear Lake to the Gulf, and 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The trails of one region and tribe, 
or confederation of tribes, ran imperceptibly into those of another. 
Along these paths the light of thousands of camp-fires was always 
shining by night, and silent files of warriors, one behind the other, 
were always passing like dusky ghosts. There were trails and 
Indians and camp-fires everywhere, yet so far apart that it would 
almost seem that there were none, and that the vast continent was 
not inhabited. 

Rivers and lakes were crossed in canoes, and the trails went 
round, over or through all natural difficulties. There was even a 
kind of commerce in those days without records, and tribe exchanged 
with tribe the rude necessities and commodities of savage life. There 
were vast regions where there were no metals accessible ; yet every 
tribe had its armlets and nose-rings. There were districts where 
there was no flint or obsidian for arrow-heads ; yet all had these 
articles of prime necessity. What was not got by exchange was 
taken by theft or conquest. 

But these were not colonists. They never -stayed ; they did not 
acquire, or try to acquire, territory. They came and went, and left 
not a shred of the history of conquest. It can hardly be conceived 
of in these days that what was considered worth toil, wandering and 
privation ; what was worth fighting and dying for ; was not wort^ 
even so much record as a heap of stones. The North American 
Indian was, and still is, a curious specimen of humanity. Guided 
by an instinct in wandering as unerring as that of the wild goose, 
the wilderness remained, save for these dim trails, absolutely un- 
changed by their presence through uncounted centuries. 

It is a very curious fact that these trails ; — at least the principal and 
main ones ; — have had a most decided effect upon modern commerce. 



KANSAS CITY 



13 




The Original Trail-Makers 



14 



OVERLAND GLUDE. 



They are the commercial highways of the present. Starting from 
the Atlantic coast the traveler will closely follow them even to the 
Pacific coast. Wherever the railway lines cross the mountains the 
track lies almost precisely in the old paths. They were deepened 
and worn by white men who imitated the Indians, long bef'ore the 
railroads took them for the last use that has been found for them in 
these later times when the chiefest consideration of life is trade and 
transportation. 

For the prehistoric savage ; — the old Indian who lived and died 
long before he had been dreamed of as a subject of song or story, 
or as the owner of valuable lands, or as a " ward of the Govern- 
ment "; — discovered and used all the 
notches nature has placed so far apart 
in the grim escarpments of the Rocky 
Mountains. His trails crossed them, 
leading up to them from far across the 
plains. Raton Pass is in this sense one 
of the oldest gateways of the world. 
The existence of it gave rise to the 
great trail from the bend of the Mis- 
souri, where now is Kansas City, to the 
Valley of the Rio Grande, down that 
valley to El Paso ; — an ancient rock- 
An Early Explorer. bottomcd ford ; — down to the high- 

lands of Mexico, or, by other passes beyond, to the Pacific 
coast. 

This, in much later days now historic from our view, was utilized 
by white men. The few Spanish soldiers who followed Coronado on 
his celebrated expedition to Quivira, came and returned by it, 
guided by an Indian whose tale of Quivira was but a fabrication to 
lure unwelcome visitors away from his people. Later, and, indeed, 
comparatively very recently, the traders took it. It became the 
" Santa Fe Trail." The bend of the Missouri, as anciently, was still 




KANSAS CITY. 15 

its western end. We measure the place by our own standards ; but 
it was of immense importance long before it had become even West- 
port Landing. 

This old trail, lined with graves and wet with tears, the scene 
throughout its weary length of innumerable battles that are not 
named in history, the place of toils and perils that can never be 
lived again, was the origin of the idea from which was born what is 
now known as the Sante Fe Route. We are interested in this fact, 
and in all that may be said about the various trails that have been 
usurped by the most colossal of the commercial achievements of man, 
because we shall follow one of them on this journey ourselves almost 
as it lay a thousand or two years ago. Perhaps we shall find that its 
interest has not all quite departed. 

Yet Kansas City, by that name at least, is not a city of reminis- 
cences. The western, or Santa F6, trade did not begin from it until 
1832, when Independence, its now near neighbor, became the " out- 
fitting" point for the western freighters. " Outfit " — " to outfit," — 
seems to be another peculiarly western term, now become a part of 
the language. The first stock of goods was landed at the present 
site of Kansas City in 1834. 

But even this was some time before the quarrel, for the boundary 
line which placed the then unmade and undreamed-of city in Mis- 
souri was not established until 1836. 

In 1839 a few houses seem to have been erected, and in 1853 the 
village had, at most, only 478 souls. 

In 1843-44 came a flood which submerged the place. This was 

followed by the cholera. The growth may be said to have stopped 

during this period, and for some years after. In the same year the 

difficulty between Texas and New Mexico — this is again to our 

eyes quite prehistoric — rendered an armed escort necessary for a 

Santa Fe train. This doubtless interfered very seriously with 

business. 

But so important was this trade already grown that books were 
2 



16 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

published on the subject about this time. They read like foreign 
travels. In August, 1843, ^^^ the Mexican frontier ports of entry 
were closed, and remained so until 1S50. This had the effect of 
blockading all the Missouri river towns. 

Mr. D. W. Wilder (" Annals of Kansas," p. 49) says that on August 
26, 1854, Leavenworth and Kansas City were first mentioned in the 
New York Tribune. This, then, seems to have been about the 
beginning of the history of the present era. They may have been 
mentioned before, but the Ti-ibune settled the question as to its 
having previously been worth while. 

Another record states that "in 1857 the city had grown to 8,000 
inhabitants, with a list of mercantile houses surpassing any Missouri 
town, and with a larger trade than any city of its size in the world." 

It is not known whether or not the writer means that Kansas City 
was not then a Missouri town, or whether he excludes St. Louis and 
other places from his mental list of " Missouri towns." It may have 
had the 8,900 inhabitants mentioned, but as late as 1859 it did not 
look as though it had them, at least as permanently established 
citizens. 

But, at least, Kansas City is one of the places that has grown, and 
grows, almost as fast as they say she does. This, of itself, consti- 
tutes the place a western phenomenon. In 1870 the population was 
stated to be 32,286. In 1873, 40,140. In 1S85, 128,474. It now 
claims, per directory, 180,000. Mr. Jay Gould, in 18S6, is reported 
to have distinctly stated in an interview with a prominent citizen 
that " in twenty-five or thirty years more you will see Kansas City as 
large as Chicago and St. Louis are at that tinted 

There is therefore little use in asking " upon what kind of meat 
doth this our Caesar feed." It is a wonderful place, offering to the 
tourist from older communities the most wonderful of all the 
instances of western growth. The same circumstances that gave 
the far-western trading-post her business a quarter of a century ago, 
feed her now. The causes of greatness are perpetual. Many a 



KANSAS CITY. 



17 



reader will have no taste for the comparisons of local history and 
the reminiscences of a quarter of a century. Many a one would 
have more, could he but remember the wilderness as it was, and 
compare the present with the dim past of so little a while ago. It is 
•one of the valuable lessons of the trans-Conti'iiental journey these 
pages are supposed to record. 




From the Other End of the Trail. 



K^ANSAS. 



[O get back to the depot again, to see the crowd that was not 
here yesterday and will not be here to-morrow ; yet the same 
crowd ; is an awakening from the dream of the Beginning which 
may possibly seem to have been indulged in. 

You have the names of the trains called in the long-drawn and 
sorrowful tones customarily heard at depots, and there begin to be- 
long vacant spaces under the shed. This train and that one slip 
silently away ; one to Chicago or St. Louis, or both ; one to Omaha,, 
another to Denver and San Francisco. There are more than a 
dozen of them altogether, and these very long and very well filled 
trains represent about thirty thousand miles of track. Within the- 
past year Kansas alone has had her surface gridironed by about 
1,700 miles of new steel. 

A very large number of people are statistical, and every man m. 
these commercial times who can quote figures, is respected accord- 
ingly. Still thinking of the ox-teams, and huge wagons, and bull- 
whackers, of twenty-five years ago, the waiting reader may be greatly- 
interested to know that so long ago as during 1886 there were 981,- 
264 trunks handled ; — they call it " handled " from a mere native- 
sense of humor — on those platforms, and looked for and enquired 
about, and tumbled and slid and rolled, under and across that time- 
worn and battle-scarred piece of timber at the door of the baggage- 
room. This represents an immense and unknown sum in ladies' and 
gents' furnishing goods. 

During the same year 4,960,320 people got on and off these trains. 
This is not counting travel by suburban trains, or the uncles, cousins 
and aunts who accompany bridal parties to the depot. 

(18) 



KANSAS. 19 

There are about $8,000,000 actually invested in railroad 
property within the limits of the city. All the steamboats that 
■ever plied the waters of the Missouri since the little stern- 
wheeler that made her astonishing appearance here in 181 9, 
March 2d, if they were tied end to end and trailed out by 
the current, would not represent this sum in value. This last 
statistic is guessed at all the more freely since it is understood 
that the railroads have the entire business. The boats have gone 
with the camp-fires. 

" Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. All aboard for Kansas, Colo- 
rado and Southern Cal — " That is ours ; let us go. 

You are no sooner away from the shadows of the building than 
you are on modern historic ground. There is often very little justi- 
fication for this often-made remark. All ground is in a certain geo- 
logical sense historic. But it is made in this case very appropri- 
ately. A very distinct group of sensations are evoked at the name 
of Kansas, and, after all the strictly historical part is done with, the 
fact remains that in all the history of civilization, of which Kansas 
makes one of the most brilliant chapters, no territory of equal extent 
lias ever afforded so great and lasting a benefit to the average 
struggling and energetic man. 

The ground now comprising the State of Kansas was once mostly 
•owned by the Pawnee nation of Indians. These people had their 
vicissitudes, for when settlements began first to be made the 
•country was held by the Kaws. The remark about vicissitudes is 
merely an inference drawn from the fact apparent to anybody who 
ever knew the Kaws, that if they could take a country away from 
anybody, the party of the first part must have previously had vicis- 
situdes, or something almost as bad. 

The Kaw, or Kansas, Indians gave the name it bears to the State. 
Very frequently it has been questioned why these two names were 
interchangeable, and why the Indians, and the river upon whose 
branches they lived, should be known by the one name or the other, 



30 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



indifferently, or the Indians by one name and the State by another^ 
or vice versa. 

Kanza, Kanzas, Kanzoe, and the same name with an " s " instead 
of a "z" partakes of the common fate of all our Indian names. 




The Kaw Valley Peopie of 1855. 



" Illinois," certainly, has had the same troubles. " Kaw " is the 
understanding the first settlers had of the pronunciation of the word 
" Kansas " by the French voyageurs, who were the tireless wanderers 
of the early times, and who were of course encountered here. 



KANSAS. 21 

Actual history, in our sense, begins about April 30, 1819, upon 
which date the treaty was signed by which France ceded to the 
United States the Province of Louisiana. This included all of the 
present Kansas except that strip of it which now lies south of the 
Arkansas River. That strip seems to have been won by conquest, 
contrary to what they call the " time-honored " policy of our Gov- 
ernment. It came in as a result of the outrageous little war in 
which we aired our valor before we began fighting in earnest, with 
something to fight for. The territory that came with it was an 
enormous slice, covering almost the whole of the journey we are 
now making. 

After the traders, the very first who came to Kansas were the 
Missionaries. From the records, publications and journals of these 
little missions, the information has been derived which seems to have 
settled definitely and at last the disputed personality of that bold 
frontiersman, the "first white male child born in Kansas." The 
matter is only mentioned here because of the offense having fre- 
quently been laid on the wrong person. Very appropriately, and 
with poetic fitness, that "first," etc., was the grandson of Daniel 
Boone. His name was Napoleon Boone, and he succeeded to his 
inheritance of fame sometime during the year 1825. Somewhere 
about the southern line of what is now Jefferson County, the event 
occurred. It was well inland, and is thought not to have been such 
an unlawful importation of a voter from Missouri as became too 
common at a later date. 

Some of the most charming literature in the English language was 
published in this year 1825, and about this country. But Washing- 
ton Irving was very indefinite in his geography, in the two books, 
"Tour of the Prairies," and "The Adventures of Captain Bonne- 
ville." It only appeared to him as it must have to those early 
missionaries and Santa Fe traders. It was a beautiful and silent 
vastness. The country had been "explored," but there were no 
boundaries, and very few names. Zebulon Pike and his brethren 



22 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

had made these deUghtful marches that hundreds of boys have since 
envied, through a land that was so full of meat that the meat was in 
the way. What is now the pretty city of Council Grove had after- 
ward witnessed a meeting of Indian head-men with the United 
States Commissioners appointed to solicit of them the privilege of 
crossing the plains, their undisputed country, from Independence to 
New Mexico, 780 miles, and they had graciously given a promise they 
only kept at intervals, for the Santa Fe Trail, as has been stated, was a 
scene of ambuscades, surprises, and bloody fights always. It is 
curious how valor can have been so persistent without accompanying 
fame, — for there were no newspaper reporters in those days, — and 
how the blue-stem grass or the waving corn has long since overgrown 
a thousand bloody graves and the scenes of a hundred displays of the 
same courage that is commemorated now in our national cemeteries. 
Within a mile of the Union depot the train enters Kansas. All 
the hills you see rolling away to the southward were not long since 
covered with diamond-shaped wagon corrals, and glowing in the 
dusk with camp-fires. It was, within two or three miles of the 
river, a vast overland camping-ground. It was, so to speak, the 
delta of the great trail; — a curious community lacking only one feature 
of the picturesqueness of the West of a little later. The revolver had 
not yet been invented. Whiskey was there — much more of it, and 
probably much better, than there is in later times in this virtuous com- 
monwealth; and there was an occasional gun. But it was of the long, 
old-fashioned, slender-gripped kind, that loaded at the muzzle, out 
of a powder-horn, and that had a beautiful piece of mechanism in 
the shape of a flint-lock. It seems incredible, but with this museum 
relic all the sharp and desperate battles of the trail were fought. 
With it a continent was practically won. All American history is 
based upon it. To recall i.t with all the vividness one can, only 
causes us to come to the conclusion that the Americans of those 
days would, had there been necessity, have conquered their way to 
empire with wayside stones. 



KANSAS. 23 

At the beginning of the journey it may be well to formulate a 
few of the plainest and prosiest of the facts about Kansas. There 
is plenty of romance ; and a long category of peculiarities, for the 
State has a most remarkable modern history; but the material things 
very likely come first in the minds of the majority of readers, 
though it was sentiment, elan, pluck, that made the State more 
than the material advantages or favorable circumstances that are so 
much discussed in the tens of thousands of pages of descriptive 
printing that have been issued since in her behalf. 

Kansas is a symmetrical and well-proportioned oblong square, 
lying, as a whole, quite in the centre of the Union. This square is 
four hundred and ten miles long, and two hundred and ten miles 




Early Kansas Residence, 

wide, and has an area of 81,318 square miles. The only deviation 
from a square in the configuration of the State is caused by the Mis- 
souri River, with a northwestward trend, cutting off a slice of the 
upper right-hand corner. 

One must think twice before he can quickly comprehend what 
has passed in this quadrangle of soil in the way of material develop- 
ment in the past few years, and when one lends himself to a con- 
templation of the picture, judging by the past, the result must be 
nothing less than a general feeling of astonishment. Were Kansas 
as densely populated as New England is, it would contain thirty- 
three million people. As the soil is so much better that there is 



24 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 




KANSAS. 25- 

no comparison between the two sections in that respect ; — indeed, 
Kansas soil would be worth almost anywhere in New England 
probably twenty-five cents a cart-load as a fertilizer ; — one can but 
fairly conclude that in the course of a few years that enormous 
population must be attained. Were the population as dense as it is. 
even in Ohio, there would be six millions of population. 

In i860, the year before the State was admitted, there was a 
population of 107,206. There is a very slight doubt whether there 
were quite so many as that. At the end of ten years, or in 1870^ 
there were 364,369 people. 

June ist, 1880, showed a population of 996,096. 

March i, 1885, by a State census, there were 1,268,530 people. 

There is, even from a modern and western standpoint, something 
extraordinary in this high percentage of increase. But there is. 
another view from which it is much more remarkable. This increase, 
it must be remembered, has taken place in the heart of a desert. 
No allusion is made here to the "Great American," etc., of the 
old geographies. That glossy and polished chestnut has been 
passed around for twenty years, and no one who knows how the 
geographies are made ever wonders at their teachings. It was a 
desert in the opinions of men who had tramped and camped all 
over it; who knew it well. The explorers believed it uninhabitable. 
The traders and freighters agreed. The more learned wrote 
elaborate treatises of warnmg. The judicious grieved. The writer 
hereof once had the adventurous spirit (under orders) to travel from 
end to end of the very best of Kansas, — the Arkansas Valley. He 
was possessed of an amiable mule, which he rode, and when the 
mule was unamiable he walked. The whole country had been swept 
by the besom of desolation. It was not only a homeless solitude; 
there were reasons palpable and undoubted why it should never 
become the home of civilized man. 

Now, I presume, the Arkansas Valley in Kansas contains six or 
seven hundred thousand people. Now, there is every reason per-^ 



56 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

fectly apparent why it should become one of the most prosperous 
agricultural regions in the world, yet now, even yet, one is aston- 
ished at the fool-hardiness, the temerity, the fatuousness, that 
induced the building through this waste, at that time, of the great 
railroad upon which we now journey to the Pacific coast. It was 
the great cause of settlement, and there was not a habitation even in 
hope when it first stretched its lonesome lines of iron across the 
silent landscape. 

And yet, they say that " capital is timid." The fact is, that capital 
is merely strange. If there is anything which makes an unneces- 
sary fuss ; that sings when it is saddest and is most hilarious and 
seemingly jocund when its back is broken, it is capital. It is the 
human institution that has a thousand forms of deceit. But it is 
useless to say, after the western railroads, and the money it took to 
build them, and the circumstances, that capital is "timid." 

Kansas is subdivided into ninety-five counties. An average one 
of these counties contains about a half-million acres of land. 
Most of them approach very nearly the form of the square. All 
old-fashioned notches and diagonals are left off. The simplicity of 
the Government surveys has been adhered to wherever possible. 

It is all prairie. Only a very small fraction of the surface ever 
had any timber growth. But in many instances that which was 
prairie has become timber. Millions of trees have been planted, 
and have grown into fair-sized timber within a brief time. Trees 
have completely changed the original appearance of the country in 
very many cases. The horizon has departed, and clumps interrupt 
the once almost boundless view. Kansas, revisited by the very 
early settler, has a tendency to make him retire behind a hedge or 
a red barn, for the purpose of castigating himself for not guessing 
in time at the capacities of a country about which every common- 
sense indication, every gloomy prophecy, was alike completely at 
fault. They said, among many other wise things, that trees wouldn't, 
wouldn't grow. God did not intend they should, or He would have 



KANSAS. 2T 

planted them Himself. It was a pious conclusion, built upon the 
ideas of the Old School. But, like others of the same kind, it 
appears to have been erroneous. Trees not only grow, but in this- 
soil that, never since the dawn of the present creation until now 
felt the thrill of a creeping rootlet, they grow better than they da 
elsewhere. 

The general idea of a prairie country is that it should be flat. 
This is not; though the State can not boast a mountain, or even 
anything that can be called a hill except by a considerable stretch. 
of courtesy. There is said not to be a swamp within its bound- 
aries. The country is what is called " rolling," and the undulations 
are very charming to the eye. From May until November, Kansas 
is well worth a visit for the mere sake of feasting the eye upon 
probably the most charming pastoral landscape, and the most exten- 
sive, in the world. It will not answer to allow yourself to become 
attracted by it unless you propose to listen to the promptings which 
persuade you to remain. "Horizon hungry" is a phrase that has. 
crept inadvertently into the language. It is not entirely hyper- 
bole. Nooks and valleys historically charming will thereafter 
lose their spell to you, — because they are too small. All Kansas 
people are celebrated for an unreasoning poo-poohing of all other 
localities. It is aut Kansas aut nihil. Sometimes one thinks they 
would like to wall her in, and have everything to themselves, with 
a few reciprocity and other treaties with those they liked, and 
with a set of histories, newspapers, periodicals and poets all to- 
themselves, and to suit them. This spirit of loyalty has aided 
largely in the wonderful growth of the country, and has its avail- 
able side, and is entirely excusable as an effect of locality and 
climate. But it has made possible a variety of treason not con- 
templated by the Constitution, and that is punishable only by 
epithets, and has called out a retaliatory crop of denials and counter- 
charges. 

This is the land of pretty towns, as you will find to be the case as 



KANSAS. 29 

you rapidly come nearer to the middle of the " desert." They have 
grown and changed with unequalled rapidity within the past two 
years. In each of them the school-house is the prominent object. 
Only in the very newest neighborhoods is the school-building a poor 
one, and it may be said with certainty that it never long remains so. 
The system of public education is one of the most complete possible, 
and public and private interest in the education of the masses has 
not flagged from the beginning. A heavy indebtedness for school- 
buildings is not complained of, and the first and latest effort of 
every man who comes is to get, first a school-house ; second, a 
railroad. There is one eastern feature that will be missed ; 
there are no ** saloons." It is true. This hideous feature of 
■civilization is actually eliminated. The Kansas " cranks " are 
made of that kind of material that they actually mean their theories. 
So far as human wisdom can see, there is no hope of the 
re-establishment of this most - horrible of industries. There is 
now no question of either the wisdom or the strength of the anti- 
saloon movement. It is not a movement ; it is a fact acquiesced 
in by everybody. 

There is, among minor considerations, something very remarkable 
about the "luck" of this peculiar commonwealth. Every mishap 
that could befall her by conspiracy of all the malignant powers has 
befallen her. Nothing could be more terrible than the drouth of 
i860, of which the half has not been told, or the grasshopper 
scourge of 1874. They both, to all appearances, resulted in a 
splendid advertisement and succeeding booms. Everything that it 
was said Kansas could not do, and was not fitted to do, she has 
done. 

In early times her climate was most discouraging from its very 
inherent and incurable disagreeableness. The wind was always 
blowing. It amounted to malice. Everything that was portable 
was taken by the wind to some other locality. This perpetual 
sirocco was not occasional, but continuous. It did not rain with 



30 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

any regularity even during the (comparatively) ^^^^ years, and, in 
fine, the weather, and anxiety about the weather, was the burden of 
common life. 

This is all changed, as the world knows. Why ? 

The last "streak " of industrial luck that has struck the country is 
the sugar industry. This sugar is made from " sorghum " cane, 
yields largely, can be made with certainty, and is profitable at four- 
and-one-half cents per pound ; perhaps less. There is no locality 
outside of its native Africa where this cane grows so big, and thick, 
and tall, and sweet, as it does in Kansas. As usual with enterprises 
here, this industry is destined to grow with great rapidity. There 
will soon be sugar-houses with tall chimneys sticking up out of the 
landscape everywhere. Nobody will have ever seen these chimneys 
before except in the midst of the palms, and with at least semi- 
tropical surroundings. 

And for years they have been raising sorghum in the western por- 
tions of the State as a forage-crop. If that despised region can now 
come forward as a sugar-country, it will succeed in turning the 
tables very handsomely upon previous reputation. 

There is a good deal of Kansas history of a more modern date 
than any thus far mentioned. All the hills you see beyond the 
timber, and out to the southward, have been in a later day than that 
of the historic trail tramped over by those who were making history 
with great effect, and more of it, probably, than they at the time 
supposed. All the trails leading westward from the Missouri over 
this part of the State have been tramped over by armed men. They 
did not live here ; in point of fact they had not the least business 
here, and did not come to stay. 

At this date, and to younger men, the whole story of the attempted 
conquest of Kansas by people who came here purposely to do it, 
and in the interest direct and avowed of an institution as dead now 
as Pompey the Great, seems absurd. But they did come, and they 
came so near to success in their efforts that for a while they were 



KANSAS. 



31 



:sure they had succeeded. However, later times have shown that 
this was but the sign of an approaching revolution. This is the 
sense in which the first battles of the great war were fought in Kan- 
sas ; a remark that is often made. 

"No wonder they wanted it." This was the only remark 
made on the subject by a gentleman looking out at the car win- 
dow on this same route, when his eye fell upon the landscape 




State University 



a few miles east of Lawrence, where the VVakarusa joins the Kaw. 
The country had a charm even in those gloomy days. They 
" wanted " it. 

A few minutes before noon the train reaches Lawrence. It is 
now a town embowered in trees, and a place of elegant houses, 
often referred to somewhat tritely as "the Athens of Kansas." For 
the State University is here ; a beautiful building crowning the hill 
west of the city, and visible for many miles in all directions. It is 



32 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

an institution that has received especial care from successive Legis- 
latures, and that is rapidly growing in influence and educational 
facilities. But the State is full of " institutions of learning," de- 
nominational and otherwise, and the public interest is largely con- 
centrated in the schools. 

Here, on the right of the train, one may see a curious sight, — for 
Kansac. It is a dam across the Kaw River ; the only one in sight in 
a long journey. It is the only one ever built across this sandy cur- 
rent, the "bed-rock" of which almost always eludes the eye of 
industry. 

As a point of historical interest, Lawrence takes high rank. The 
place was the centre and capital of the Free State side of the 
Kansas struggle, and, then and since, its streets have witnessed 
strange sights. Here, on the then extreme verge of western civiliza- 
tion, it has been burned, purposely and by enemies, two several times. 
First, when it was a mere village, but a very widely known one, on 
May 21, 1856, and last, on August 21, 1863. 

The following two accounts of the last burning are given in. 
Wilder's "Annals of Kansas." The first was written by the Rev. 
Richard Cordley, D. D. The last appeared in a book called "Shelby 
and his Men," printed in Cincinnati in 1867, and it gives a Confed- 
erate view of the massacre. 

Mr. Cordley's acconnt: 

"Early in the Summer of 1863, a large band entered Olathe, one night, about 
midnight. They took most of the citizens prisoners, and kept them till their work 
was done. They plundered the town, carried off what they wanted, and destroyed 
other property, and left before daylight. They killed some seven men. 

"Some time after they sacked the town of Shawnee twice. In addition to rob- 
bery, they burned most of the town. Several were killed here also. Individual 
murders and house-burning were common. 

" On the 2oth cf August, a body of between three and four hundred crossed the 
State line at sundown. Riding all night they reached Lawrence at daybreak. They 
dashed into the town with a yell, shooting at everybody they saw. The surprise 
was complete. The ^lotel, and every point where a rally would be possible, was. 



KANSAS. 33 

seized at once, and the ruffians then began the work of destruction. Some of the 
citizens escaped into the fields and ravines, and some into the woods, but the larger 
portion could not escape at all. Numbers of those were shot down as they were 
found, and often brutally mangled. In many cases the bodies were left in the burn- 
ing buildings, and were consumed. The Rebels entered the place about five 
o'clock, and left between nine and ten. Troops for the relief of the town were 
within six miles when the Rebels went out. One hundred and fonty-three were left 
dead in the streets, and about thirty desperately wounded. The main street was all 
burned but two stores. Thus, about seventy-five business houses were destroyed, 
and nearly one hundred residences. They destroyed something near two millions 
of property, left eighty widows and two hundred and fifty orphans as the result of 
their four hours' work. Scenes of brutality were enacted which have never been 
surpassed in savage warfare. The picture is redeemed only by the fact that women 
and children were in no case hurt." 

The Confederate view: 

"About daylight on the morning of August 21, 1863, Quantrill, with three 
hundred men, dashed into the streets of Lawrence, Kansas. Flame and bullet, 
waste and pillage, terror and despair, were everywhere. Two hundred were killed. 
Death was a monarch, and men bowed down and worshiped him. Blood ran in 
rivulets. The guerrillas were unerring shots with revolvers and excellent horsemen. 
General Lane saved himself by flight; General Collamore took refuge in a well, and 
died there. Poor Collamore! He should have kept away from the well, upon the 
principle that actuated the mother who had no objection to her boy's learning how to 
swim, if he didn't go near the water. Printers and editors suffered. Speer of the 
Tribune, Pa'mcr of the Journal, Trask of the State Journal, hadn't time even to 
write their obituaries. Two camps of instruction for white and negro soldiers, on 
Massachusetts street (of course), were surrounded and all their occupants killed. 
Every hotel, except the City Hotel, was burned. Other property, valued at two 
million dollars, was also fired and consumed. . . . . Massachusetts street was 
made a mass of smouldering ruins. Sometimes there is a great deal in a name — in 
this instance more than is generally the case. After killing every male innaJ^itant 
who remained in Lawrence, after burning the houses in the town and those directly 
around it, Quantrill very quietly withdrew his men into Missouri and rested there, fol- 
lowed, however, at a safe distance, by General Lane, who made terrible threats, but 
miserable fulfillments. Two hundred white abolitionists, fifty or sixty negroes, and 
two millions of dollars' worth of property were fearful aggregates of losses." 



34 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

The purely political history of these times in Kansas is very inter- 
esting, especially in the light of later events. But it can not be 
given here. 

Eleven miles west of Lawrence is another celebrated town. It is 
Lecompton, the ancient capital of Kansas under the pro-slavery 
organization. It is now a country hamlet, changed in its politics 
and ni all other aspects. Here, overgrown with vegetation, and 
looking as ancient as Thebes, are the ruins of the old times. There 
are foundations of an elaborate Capitol building whose walls never 
grew beyond the basement and upon which a religious college now 
stands. There are the remains of the jail where the "Yankees" 
were confined, when caught, upon charges of high political crimes, 
and under a peculiar construction of the constitutional definition of 
"treason." Many of the first settlers of Kansas obtained on this 
historic spot, and in this " Bastile," their most valuable political cap- 
ital, upon which they did a fair business for many years afterward. 

Reminiscences and association might have a rich field here, but it 
is a busy country, and a very changeful one. The growing trees, 
the fields of tall corn, the creeping carpet of sod, seem to have con- 
spired with the new-comers and the rising generation to obliterate 
all the past. There is no country where less attention is paid to the 
has-beens and the might-have-beens. The revolutionary war is 
scarcely more a memory than are those recent times when men seem 
to have gone stark-mad over a political idea ; when, for the sake 
of perpetuating an institution that was even then doomed if there is 
justice in Heaven, they were dyeing this virgin soil with the blood of 
rapine and murder. And all the while, by their misdirected endeav- 
ors, they were doing what they could to bring about a result pre- 
cisely opposite from that which they desired. Here they succeeded in 
awaking that phlegmatic northern lion who had up to that date 
hardly so much as growled. He stayed awake for five years after ; 
he refused to lie down again ; and when 1861 came he was still alert, 
and ready to begin that contest of four years during which he never 



KANSAS. 35 

slept. This is the sense in which the War was begun in Kansas. 
The fatuous -and foolish criminalities of early Kansas taught the 
country what to expect. Nine men in ten, regardless of mere party,- 
were angry about it. Old John Brown, beginning his career here, 
went on to Harper's Ferry. Mrs. Stone had written " Uncle Tom," 
and Helper contributed his prophetic book. The country is still 
full of grizzled old fellows who were partakers in every peril of 
those times. Some of them, as they pass by on a railway train that was 
not dreamed of then, may look out at Lecompton with a grim smile, — 
remembering how full the place was of the preliminary parodies 
upon their own later experiences. At one time nearly a hundred 
free State men were confined here, and had many of the experi- 
ences of prisoners of war ; vermin, bad food, etc. They kept 
escaping, and could not be caught again. One night all who remained 
were released by a surprise party of their friends. 

At about one o'clock, Topeka is reached. Here is served the 
first dinner of the journey, in the first of the longest series of 
hotels on the continent, and whose cookery and attendance one dis- 
covers to be an especial feature of the trip. The dining-car system 
has not been adopted. The journey is a long one, and it is 
pleasanter for passengers to seat themselves at a table that stands 
still, and enjoy a meal for which the old-fashioned twenty minutes 
gives place to a full half-hour. 

Very little of the actual Topeka can be seen from the depot. 
The extensive village in the neighborhood of the depot consists of 
the very extensive shops, warehouses and yards of the Company, 
and the homes of a small army of employes. 

The Santa Fe system was born in Boston, but it was conceived 
in Topeka. Away back in the sixties, when the infant State was at 
that age when nothing could be foretold of her more than can be 
of the average infant, the scheme which has since developed into 
some eight thousand miles of steel track occurred to the private 
consciousness of a citizen of the little prairie village. Of course, 



36 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

the origin of the idea was the trail, and the fact that an extensive 
trade existed in the precise direction to be taken by the locomotive ; 
. — when it should come. This dream, which should then have 
consigned its author to a lunatic asylum if there had been any, 
should now constitute a sufficient reason for his perpetuation in 
bronze. The story of the difficulties encountered before the 
" timidity " of capital could finally be overcome, would, if truly 
told, constitute an attractive industrial romance of itself. The 
dream came true. It remains a fact. The dreamer, now only in 
middle life, has long been enjoying the substantial fruits of per- 
sistence in a chimerical idea. 

One of the secrets of the success of Kansas has been that the 
State was from the beginning specially helped by a peculiar quality 
of brains. The dreamers have made it. A hundred schemes have 
been born since then, all of them ridiculous in the beginning, but a 
considerable percentage of them very successful now. The con- 
servatism of old communities has never had a place. The field was 
wide, and everything was to be yet done, and they did it. The 
Santa Fe Route is only one example. But it was the boldest of all. 
There is a sense in which the State of Kansas owes more to this 
extraordinary conception in the mind of a private citizen than she 
does to any other fact in her history. 

About the time of the beginning of the idea of the Santa Y6 
Route, the village of Topeka was decided upon as the capital o''-':he 
State. The prominence of the place was thereafter more or less 
assured. There are now about thirty thousand people here, and it 
is the political and social centre of the commonwealth. 

This road has two Missouri River termini ; one at Atchison, the 
other, and chiefest, at Kansas City. The stem of the grotesque 
"Y," for the two arms of which Topeka is the junction point, 
extends almost indefinitely down to the southwestward. They call 
it " down " here, presumably because it is up. It is a western 
fashion ; they frequently call a man " Governor " during all the 



KANSAS. 



37 



remainder of hia life, simply because he never was a governor, and 
is known to have sincerely wished to be. It is really up ; about 
8,000 feet of steady climb before one 
reaches the crest of the long slope which 
is the western side of the Missouri-Mis- 
sissippi Valley at Raton Tunnel. 

For instance, Kan as City is 765 feet 

above sea-level. The short distance to 

Topeka includes a climb of 135 feet. A 

hundred and thirty-four miles farther, at 

Newton, just at the beginning of what in 

late years has been distinctively known as 

8 "the plains," you are 1,454 feet high; — 

S a climb of 554 feet more; — and so on 

c westward. Reduced to a scale whose 

CO 

-0 differences are appreciable to the eye, as 
i- in the profile, and it is the steep side of 
I a gigantic ridge. It does not take many 

c: 

1 hours of travel to reach an elevation as 

c 

I high as Mount Washington, and one never 

-S thinks of the fact, since nothing in the 

•5 surroundings indicates it to the eye. 

> 

i^ So overgrown with trees is Topeka that 

in Summer it almost produces the im- 
pression that it is situated in native and 
natural woods, where only some of the 
trees, and not enough of them, have been 
cut out. Grass, of the thickest and green- 
est variety, is also plentiful. Also, in 
Summer-time, the outlying streets and vac- 
ant lots are thickly grown with gigantic 
yellow sunflowers. But there is nothing 
else about the place thaf would indicate 




^.<'*„ V '-^0% 

Mr 




o o o b o o o o ; 
OOOOOOOn- 

a lM'ol nil ■*1 n1 wU]' 



38 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

any particular devotion to the sestheticism of which this weed is the- 
accepted emblem. 

This growth of trees and vegetation is not so remarkable unless, 
taken in connection with another fact ; that the soil upon which the 
city stands was always celebrated for its poverty, being of the hardest 
and yellowest variety of "hard-pan," which twenty years ago was 
not considered capable of the faintest of those cachinnations the earth 
is said to indulge in when tickled with a hoe. It was covered with 
a short and wiry growth of grass that looked like dead moss and was 
the recognized emblem of poverty. This may answer for a hundred or 
more places in Kansas, and seems to be one of the features of that 
much-discussed "climatic change " that has wrought a miracle upon 
all the country lying west of the Missouri for five hundred miles, still 
growing less and less apparent as the limit is approached. Time was- 
when no upland in the State was considered valuable. The majority 
were of the opinion that it could never be tilled. When Western Kan- 
sas is reached the reader will form that opinion of it, forgetful of the 
fact that the whole State was once under the same ban. This opinion 
was almost universally entertained about a quarter of a century ago. 

The view, in Summer, from the roof of any public building in 
Topeka is, excepting the San Gabriel Valley of California and the; 
famed Valley of Mexico, the most beautiful pastoral landscape in. 
this country, or perhaps in any country. 

Immediately south of Topeka we pass the Osage coal-fields. 
These were a great find in their day, because they solved the ques- 
tion of fuel for the country west, of whose resources little was then 
known, though it was known that wood for fuel was one of the things 
not to be thought of. The mining villages of this region are like those 
elsewhere, and seem an incongruity in the surrounding landscape. 

One of the pretty cities of Kansas is Emporia, passed about the 
middle of the afternoon. It is also reputed to be the wealthiest 
city per capita. Its main street is headed by the State Normal 
School, visible at a glance as the train passes. 



KANSAS. ■ Sd* 

Emporia is situated in the centre of what is perhaps the richest 
agricultural region in any of the western States. The valleys of 
the Neosho and the Cottonwood meet here, and either of them may 
be very well compared in extent, richness and variety of products- 
with the Muskingum, the Scioto, the Mohawk or the Connecticut. 
A few miles below, and at the junction of the two "creeks," as they 
are usually considered here, is a natural curiosity for this country. 
It is a body of timber considerably larger than any other betweea 
the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains. 

• Newton is reached at about six o'clock. It is an eating station,, 
and a most comfortable, not to say an imposing one. 

But did the reader ever hear of Newton? Look out over the 
pretty town, as civil a place as one could wish to see; enter this 
dining-hall where a meal is served that is scarcely to be excelled in 
Chicago, and not certainly elsewhere west of the Missouri; and then 
recall what Newton was about eighteen hundred and seventy-two. 
It was the extremest verge of the civilization that was beginning to 
creep over the face of the plains, and was the " hardest " commuaity 
on this continent at that date. Only Julesburg had in its day been 
worse. They counted that day lost whose low-descending sun saw 
no man killed or other mischief done. There is a spot near where 
they used to "plant " them in those days; those distinguished ones 
who " died with their boots on." Poker and monte, and the dispen- 
sing and imbibing of drinks were the only industries. The town 
was a slab and canvas emporium, full of idleness, prostitution, vice 
of all varieties, squalor, and general and unmitigated horror. There 
were no farms, or any thought of agriculture, and the silent plains, 
and the treeless valley of the Arkansas, stretched westward to the 
mountains. It was the "western progress" ridiculed by the eastern 
press, and dwelt upon at great length in all its hideous phases. It 
is the idea of western progress still cherished by hundreds of well- 
meaning people. 

Look about you now, as the sun sets upon the fair scene, and you 




40) 



KANSAS. 41 

will be able to carry away with you a picture of the actual progress 
with which the other had nothing to do ; a pretty town, farms lying 
on all sides, leagues of fruitful soil, happy homes, church spires, 
school-houses, all the sounds and sights of prosperous industry, and 
a visible wealth that is growing so rapidly that there are almost no 
poor men. 

There are scores of towns like this, and Newton is not an excep- 
tional place. There is a long night before you, to be passed in the 
rumbling oblivion of the sleeping car. If it were only daylight 
there would be some curious experiences for one making the journey 
for the first time. As it is, if at any time before one o'clock in the 
morning you look out of the window, you may see a white glow upon 
the horizon and specks of brilliancy that look like rows of setting 
stars. These are the electric lights of the towns strewn along the 
track in the "desert." 

For at Newton you are really entering upon that historic deso- 
lation. Not with reference now to the humorous geographies ; not 
by inference and ignorance ; but actually. Some concessions had 
been made by the public to eastern Kansas, and thus far only the 
facts of the geography had been exploded. This region was not 
included in that kindness. The line was drawn about here, and all 
to the westward was at least " uninhabitable." The plainsmen them- 
selves agreed to this, and this railroad company, who then owned 
some three million acres of land here, did not insist upon its value west 
of a certain line more or less definite. The last acre of this land has 
long since been sold, and of the alternate sections belonging to the 
Government there is not a " quarter " left. 

Absolute scientific fact was of no value here. People did not 
believe the deductions were correct. They came anyhow, and no 
man is so well acquainted with human nature as to be able precisely 
to tell, even now, after the fact, why they came. 

All the ancient and striking features of the Arkansas Valley, and 
the wide country that lay on either side of it for some hundreds of 



42 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

miles, have been changed. Perhaps it is the breaking of that oppres- 
sive spell of silence that used to hang over it. Perhaps it is the 
consciousness that people do live here, whether we see them or not. 
At any rate, the old times are gone. 

Crossing the almost level plain between Newton and Hutchinson,, 
the Arkansas Valley is entered at the latter place. Thence west- 
ward for three hundred miles the route lies beside, or near, that 
silent stream. 

It has been called the " Nile of America." It is not known pre- 
cisely why, but the idea seemed poetic and attractive, and we will 
consider it to be such, in the want of any other convenient Nile, and 
in view of the necessity for having one. It was silent, lone, treeless; 
a break in the prairie without banks or bluffs on either side for long 
distances ; sandy, shifting, treacherous, and its unattractive and 
unromantic current the color of ashes. Its sources were for a long 
time untraced, and it reaches the Mississippi a thousand miles from 
where we now see it in Kansas, after passing through two or three 
climates and as many States, 

A dozen years ago its banks were as uninhabited as those of any 
wilderness river in any corner of the world. The prairie-dog towns, 
were built beside it, their outraged inhabitants seeming to hold 
indignation meetings, and barking querulous protests against the other 
diggers and delvers who were lately come, against the rumble and roar 
and sounds of escaping steam that had begun to disturb the peace and 
quiet of these exemplary burghers. The two very lonesome lines of 
steel among the sedges were unauthorized by either the dogs or by 
the common sense of the times. They have long since been worn 
out by traffic, and been replaced. They have ceased to be lone- 
sorhe, and are now a part of the landscape. Yet, there is still 
something almost supernatural in the distant flash of the headlight as 
it creeps nearer and nearer through the silence and darkness across 
the reaches of the prairie by night. There is still something ominous 
in the long trail of heavy smoke that lies along the horizon by day.. 



KANSAS. 



43 



The picture of the old time does not occur to many of the push- 
ing inhabitants of the plains now. It has gone in the past, and is 
of no concern to modern interests. Away from the town and the 
track, and between fields, as it were, one might still see something 
of it. Glimpses of the historic trail may be caught occasionally 
from the windows of the train. The dog towns are still there, half- 
deserted it is true, and lacking the air of opulence and prosperity 




A Kansas Dog-Town. 

which once characterized them. But the chiefest and mOst striking 
mark of the departed days are the buffalo trails, now obliterated near 
the line but still visible, after twenty years, among the hills. 

The couiTtry was in those days crossed from South to North by 
innumerable paths cut deeply into the sod. They were almost 
endless, for they began in Texas and ended in Manitoba. The 
bison trailed himself in long lines and innumerable hosts northward 
in the spring, and back again in autumn. Filling himself with grass 



44 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

he lay down to ruminate upon it, cow-fashion. Rising up, the 
great host began its journey again. Every day some miles of 
progress were made. As it went, the herd fell into parallel lines, 
one animal walking behind the other. Thirst impelled them to a 
more rapid progress over the "divide" to the next stream. Good 
pasturage delayed them. One herd was followed by another as 
long as the migrating season lasted. And so across the plains, for a 
width of two or three hundred miles, these deep paths lay side by 
side innumerable. They are now all that is left to remember the 
bison by, though so short a time ago he was here in such countless 
multitudes. The plow obliterates them with all other signs of a 
curious Past. 

Then the gray thief of the wilderness yelped the night watches 
away, barking to hear himself, and enamored of his own voice. 
The camp-fire was his guiding star, and he smelled the frying-pan 
from afar. In the early morning, herds of antelopes would appear 
for a moment on the hills, and then were gone like phantoms of the 
mirage — the gracefulest and nimblest of the denizens of perpetual 
silence and unbroken peace. 

Skulking bands of Apaches or Kiowas, dragging all their posses- 
sions on lodge-poles that trailed behind lean ponies, and riding 
single-file around the hills, added the only feature of human life to 
a scene whose wildness was otherwise unbroken for hundreds of 
square miles. 

As to climate, it is the great question now; it was then. It was 
a dry country, but nowhere could it rain harder and faster than it 
did on the plains. The terrific storms of midsummer were prom- 
inent among the reminiscences of the old plainsmen ; the rain 
came down, not in showers, but in sheets, and the deluge was accom- 
panied by terrific thunder that broke in three or four sharp explo- 
sions in the same spot. Electric phenomena of other varieties were 
not uncommon. Balls and circles of fire rolled along the ground. 
Stock was stampeded by unusual exhibitions of flame and sound, all 



KANSAS. 45 

the low places would be flooded, and rivers would rush down the 
water-courses, carrying everything before them. In the morning all 
would be over and the ground almost dry. The fuzzy grass shed 
the water like a thatch. No rain ever soaked the plains. The sun. 
come out again, a relentless tyrant who burned the long day 
through, for weeks at a time, without a cloud. 

All Summer a wind that never ceased or rested swept across the 
country from the South. It bore all the aridness of a thousand 
leagues of heated soil upon its wings. It was often so hot that it 
seemed to scorch. Flying dust came with it, and the good-sized. 




Holding an Indignation Meeting. 



pebble stones stung the face like hail. There was a mixture of 
"alkali," also, and this blistered the lips and inflamed the eyes. 
Only when night came again was there peace, and a more splendid 
sparkle of moonlight or stars, a balmier sweetness of the air, were 
never known. 

In Winter, the wind came just the same, but from the North, and 
laden with the breath of the Arctic zone. There was not then, and 
there hardly is now, a more striking scene of desolation than the 
plains in winter. A snow storm is a terror, not from quantity, but 
because it stings and numbs and blinds. It is not of the quality of 



46 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



the heavy snow-falls that fill the northern woods. When it comes, 
there is nothing to do but to wait until it is over. It means 
less now ; there is shelter; there are hedgerows and houses; there 
are landmarks and roads. Then, to the wayfarer it was death. 




Western Kansas Cattle. 

If you could see this same picture now, in the light of a Summer 
morning, you would think the above one of the most uselessly 
extravagant sketches ever written. 

In the morning especially under consideration now ; — something 
less than twenty-four hours from Kansas City; — you will find your- 
self somewhere very near the western boundary of Kansas. Break- 
fast should await you at La Junta, Colorado. You may fancy that 



KANSAS. 47 

your car has an imperceptible slant upward at the forward end. 
There may be perceived, perhaps, a faint balsamic odor in the air, 
■and vast blue shapes, tipped or sprinkled with pure white, may lie 
upon the horizon. You will see at hand the fiat-topped hills called 
mesas (w^j'-sas) from their resemblance to a mesa; — a table. You 
will have attained an altitude of about four thousand feet, and be 
able to see b)- a hundred new sensations that you have changed 
your zone. 

The old journey of forty days you will have passed in a single 
night, and while asleep. You have gone by an empire of farming 
lands, all destined to immediate occupation, and some of them now 
worth per acre considerably more than Napoleon got for a county 
when he sold it to us. You have passed some thirty-odd thriving 
towns, some of them daily-paper and electric-light and water-works 
cities, and each with a "boom " or a prospect of one. There have 
been, besides, some hundreds of thousands of spotted cattle that 
have taken the place of the bison, and the homes of more than a 
third of a million of prosperous and contented people, with all that 
belongs to a civilization that in its rapid development is more like 
a dream than any chapter ever before written in the history of 
•civilization. 

You can have caught but a glimpse, but it is, perhaps, sufficient 
to impress the stranger to these scenes with a new idea of his 
country and its possibilities, and with the fact of how easy the slow 
and painful processes of civilization may become with steam as a 
pioneer. Also a realization, more or less vivid, of the folly of 
adopting the Chinese idea of a region because it is not one's own 
Tlowery Kingdom, elsewhere in an Eastern State. 



■L0RADI 



[HE Santa Fe Route traverses only the southeastern corner of 

P Colorado. Coolidge is the last town in Kansas, 469 miles 
from the Missouri. Seventy-five miles west of the State line, in 
Colorado, and 555 miles from the Missouri, at about half-past eight 
in the morning, we arrive at the first distinctively Spanish name, 
and also at breakfast. 

La Junta {La Hoontah) means The Junction. The name is not 
very felicitously chosen, as it also means the coming together of a 
body of men, such as a legislature or the city council. But it will 
do. It is a little town apparently in a valley, but it has an elevation 
of 4,061 feet. The mountains lie just beyond, over the hill as it 
were, and Pike's Peak is north of us some ninety miles. 

The cottonwoods and gray stream one sees are still those of the 
Arkansas, and this is the last glimpse of the stream beside which we 
have been for the past twelve hours, and on whose banks we may 
be said to have slept. Its small beginnings amid mountain snows 
are still many a mile away. 

La Junta is not a romantic spot, and exists chiefly for railroad — 
and, from appearances, for " saloon " — purposes. Here is where 
trains are made up. Travelers for the mountain resorts of Colo- 
rado, and for Pueblo and Denver, have their cars shunted off to the 
northward among the foothills of the eastern slope of the Rockies, 
or to take the Colorado Midland road for the direction of Salt Lake 
and Ogden, while those who, like ourselves, are content with nothing 
less than the Pacific coast direct, are trundled away to the south- 
westward behind a monster called a " Mogul " engine, who backs 
himself up the track and joins the procession with a snap. 

(49) 



50 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

While we are waiting it may do no harm to enquire into some of 
the facts of the State of Colorado. 

To make up Colorado, parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Utah and New 
Mexico were taken. The land, like Kansas, was acquired partly by 
conquest and partly by purchase. Some of it came from Mexico, and 
some of it was included in the Napoleon Bonaparte real estate deal. 

Colorado was admitted to the Union July, 1876, and is fondly 
known as the " Centennial " State. 

In history she is a partaker with all her far-western sisters who 
were subjects of Spanish rule, and has about the same musty histori- 
cal facts, though not so many of them, to her credit. The Spaniards 
wandered among her canyons more than three hundred years ago, 
looking for the gold that, like that of California, seems through a 
singular course of events to have been mostly reserved for the 
Saxon. 

The first American explorer was Major Zebulon M. Pike, who 
came so long ago as 1806, and has a monument which will stand in 
perpetual commemoration of his name ; — Pike's Peak. 

Colonel Long, and still later John C. Fremont, made expeditions 
through Colorado and across the mountains. 

About 1858 gold was discovered in what is now Gilpin County, a 
few m.iles from where Denver now stands. This gave great celebrity 
to the monument of Major Pike, and " Pike's Peak or Bust " passed 
into history as the watchword of western pluck. 

Colorado has an East and West length of 380 miles, and is 280 
miles from North to South. It is in form, like so many of the newer 
States, almost a perfect parallelogram. There are thirty-three coun- 
ties; they being very large; with an area of 104,500 square miles, or 
66,880,000 acres. 

There may be said to be three natural divisions of the State; — the 
mountain ranges, occupying the central portion from North to South, 
the foothills, and the plains. There are three generally parallel 
ranges of mountains, with intervening plateaux generally known as 



COLORADO. 



51 



"parks." These last are a special feature of the State. They lie at 
an elevation of nine or ten thousand feet, are almost surrounded by 
high mountain.s, and are beautiful to the eye and rich agriculturally. 
About one-third of the area of the State is plains. They lie in 
the eastern part, and are the steep western edge of the great 
central plain which the traveler from the east has just crossed. 

The further west one goes, the 
steeper becomes the plains-slope 
until the foot-hills appear. 




A Colorado Beginning. 

The character of Colorado as a mountain resort is well known. 
Beauty of sky and scene, purity of air, equability of temperature, 
have been written of to the extent of scores of volumes — thousands 
of pages. 

Formerly the country was exclusively devoted to mining, and 
undoubtedly is excedingly rich in mineral resources. But of later 
years she has been discovered to possess very valuable agricultural 
resources. The farming area is not extensive, but what is raised is 
of the best. Colorado wheat, vegetables and beef have a character 
of their own. Dairy products are a special feature. These interests 



52 OVERLAND GUIDE 

will all grow, and even now make an aggregate showing much better 
than that of some States that have no resources other than agri- 
cultural. 

Southern Colorado seems to have been about the northern limit of 
Spanish occupancy. They crept up the fine valley of the Purgatoire 
{Voyageur for " Purgatory"; — vernacular, ^'■Picket-wire") — to Trini- 
dad {La Trinidad — "The Trinity'"), and still further to Las Ani- 
mas (''The Souls"). The river also takes that name among the 
Mexicans, probably from the habitual, and perhaps very proper, 
association in the Spanish mind of Purgatory and Souls.* Where the 
Purgatoire enters the Arkansas, at the old Mexican town of Las 
Animas, on the verge of the plains, their northern occupation 
stopped. 

Pueblo is also one of the old places ; an extreme frontier village 
of the Mexican civilization. About this latitude the Indian occu- 
pancy began ; the Apaches, worst of all Indians, held the ground, 
with other tribes almost as bad, to the Missouri. 

Thirty years ago this Indian occupancy was complete, and ten 
years later it was still unsuccessfully disputed. This was the south- 
western boundary of it. A few miles west of La Junta, on the 
north side of the Arkansas, we can see from the car-windows one 
of the mementoes of that time. This is Bent's Fort. It was 
famous in its time. The straggling line of dug-outs, log huts, 
covered wagons, and tents that marked the then frontier, was away 
behind it. As skirmishers preceding the line of civilization, the 
gaunt, adventurous, nervy, desperate American frontiersmen pushed 
up the valley of the Arkansas. They were further advanced here 
than at other parts of the line because this valley was a favorite 
trail, and not because they were making farms and homes in it, as 
has since occurred. The occupants of Bent's Fort were hunters by 
predilection. They loved the wilderness, and never returned to 
civilization. They were fur-hunters and Indian traders and Indian 

* Las Animas Perdidas is probably the original Spanish name. 



COLORADO. 53 

fighters at the same time. They kept no records ; they did not 
•care. The American history they were making never got into any 
books. They were intolerant and savage-tempered men, despera- 
does on a pinch, every one. Their ranks were recruited by fugi- 
tives from justice. Life was held v<.ry cheap. They were so accus- 
tomed to the law of self-defense that it was second nature to them. 
They hated Indians, and doubtless with reason, for it is undoubt- 
edly true that all who have lived among them do hate them unless, as 
often has happened, they were so bad themselves that they could 
not live even among their desperate white companions. 




A Colorado Ranch. 

At Bent's Fort a sod wall, thick and high, enclosed about an acre. 
There never was a more terrible acre of ground. It was full of 
the most reckless men ever gathered in one spot. Every one of 
them was, in our conception, a murderer. They had a different idea 
of crime. They gambled, they got drunk, they fought Indians, 
they stole stock, and they "traded." The man Bent was the recog- 
nized head of them, and was afterward the first American Gov- 
ernor of New Mexico. The commercial idea was probably predom- 
inant, for everything was kept for sale there. The place was in the 
midst of a great buffalo range, and around it Apache, Cheyenne, 



54 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Comanche and Pawnee gathered and hunted and fought. They used, 
when lacking a quarrel among themselves, to attack the fort. They 
charged the wall on horseback. They never captured it, but if one 
should visit those ruins now he might be sure that he was standing 
upon ground that had been repeatedly soaked with human blood. 

All down the valley, so peaceful now, it was the same thing. 
Hostile tribes met in sight of the place, and fought it out almost 
under its walls. The great battle between the Sioux from the Black 
Hills and the Pawnees began close to Bent's Fort, and did not end 
until both sides had fought their way down to what is now Pawnee 
Rock, in Barton County, Kansas, which was passed at about ten 
o'clock p. M. 

Mr. Frank Wilkeson gives the following graphic picture of the 
doings of which Bent's Fort was the nucleus. It affords a glimpse 
of those old times which have so far gone that no thought is ever 
given them. Boone, and the settlement of Kentucky and Indiana, 
have more or less passed into history. All this, as bloody and as 
interesting, is curiously left out. 

"As emigration increased on the Arkansas trail, Bent's Fort became an important 
place. United States troops, marching to the Southeastern Territories, camped 
there, and frequently secured guides from the post. Thousands of dollars' worth of 
goods were sold annually. Enterprising young men bought goods at Bent's and 
loaded them onto their pack animals. Then they rode North, South, West, in 
search of Indian camps, which they entered and there traded with savage custom- 
ers. The peddlers of the plains traded only for the more valuable furs. They 
penetrated into the remote recesses of the Rocky Mountains. They crossed that 
mighty snow-capped range and drummed up trade in then unnamed valleys where 
unknown Indians lived. These men acquired trading routes along certain trails and 
jealously defended them against all intruders. They recklessly entered all the Indian 
villages they discovered. In time, if they were not shot or burned, they became 
widely known among the Indians, and were welcomed and trusted. They sup- 
plied the warriors with powder and lead and percussion caps. They also dealt in 
traps, bright-colored cloth, beads, knives, axes, fishhooks, buttons and brass wire. 
Many of these traders married Indian women, and from these unions sprang the 
half-breeds — dangerous men in whom the courage of their fathers was supple- 



COLORADO. 55. 

mented by the crafty treachery of their mothers. Some of the white traders, 
especially in the Rocky lyiountain region, adopted the dress and habits of the 
Indians, and frequently became men of consequence in the tribes. 

" Other men, lured from the bloody frontier by hope of profitable barter or love 
of adventure, or who sincerely desired to put a greater distance between themselves 
and pursuing sheriffs, loaded wagons with goods and drove westward to the buffalo 
range, expecting to meet wandering tribes of Indians. They were careless whether 
they met Sioux, Cheyennes, Crows or Blackfeet. These men generally traveled in 
groups of three or four, each driving a team of horses, behind wh'ich rolled a 
heavily-loaded wagon. Today they traded with Sioux; tomorrow they met Coman- 
che braves; the next day painted and blanketed Cheyenne warriors crowded around 
their wagons and exchanged furs for powder, balls, blankets and hardware. Or, 
today they fought, and tomorrow their corpses lay blackening in the sun, and 
glossy ravens perched on their scalpless heads and plucked their eyes, and foul 
buzzards stalked around them and prairie wolves tore them to pieces. Their goods 
were scattered throughout the villages, and their scalps, suspended from sticks 
thrust in the ground at the entrance of lodges, waved in the wind, and little Indian 
children spat on them as they played." 

Long after the times spoken of above, the plains Indians contin- 
ued strong and defiant. In November, 1864, what is called the 
" Chivington Massacre" occurred, on Sand Creek, not far from the 
site of Bent's Fort, and on the old fighting ground of the tribes. 
Chivington was a Colorado colonel, and his action was alternately 
condemned and defended. 

As late as the Summer of 1867, after railroads had begun to be 
built, and when 10,000 children attended Sunday-school in Kansas, 
there was an Indian raid in what is now a thickly settled portion of 
the State. Still later a Kansas governor resigned to take command 
of a battalion of Kansas militia, and went into the field. The same 
Summer General Custer lost sixty men in a fight with Indians on the 
Republican River, in what is now Republican County. 

On September 17, 1868, Col. G. A. Forsyth, a soldier of the war 
and a skillful fighter, was surrounded by Indians on the North 
Fork of the Republican, probably in what is now Jewell County, 
and remained so for eight days. He was almost mortally 



56 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



wounded, and lost several men and officers, among whom was 
Lieut. F. H. Beecher. 

This seems not to have been the last of the Indian exploits in 
this bloody raid, though its details are among the most thrilling in 
the annals of frontier warfare. In the Summer of 1869 they were 
still raiding Kansas. These were expiring throes. By that time 




RM'^M-.C^ 




Indian Aristocracy. 



the railroads, farm-making and popu- 
lation had advanced to an extent in- 
compatible with Indian hostilities. 
Only the perpetual and deathless de- 
sire for revenge could have brought 
them about. They were entirely useless and hopeless as attempts 
to recover lost territory or stop the fateful march of civilization. 

La Junta marks the shore of a new order of civilization; the 
oldest of the continent. Here begin the swarthy faces, the curious 



COLORADO. 57 

dress, the adobe dwellings, the laden donkeys, the huge and 
ironless carts, the curiously yoked oxen, the plows made of crooked 
sticks, the growth of crops by irrigation, the Catholic faith and the 
Spanish tongue. We shall see greatly more of all these un-Ameri- 
can things as we go westward, and with them a still older and stranger 
civilization; that of the Pueblos. 

Amid varying scenes, and upon a track that, without any refer- 
ence to sacred poetry, may be called a devious way, we pass most of 
the forenoon. The difficulties of nature are obviously increasing, 
and during this forenoon we shall climb about three thousand feet. 
Magnificent glimpses of mountains are just before, and there is 
rock, canyon and pine on either hand. A rushing stream is occa- 
sionally passed, and plow-land is one of the things of the past, away 
back beyond the western edge of Kansas. What few houses one 
sees remind one of things noted in desultory readings about Pales- 
tine, and, indeed, there is a relationship between them as near as 
that usually existing between Irish cousins. The style of the Mexi- 
can house is of Eastern origin. It came to Spain with the Moor, 
and from Spain hither. 

Before noon we reach Trinidad. The old town, the Mexican 
Trinidad, is not visible from the station. It is spoiled by civilization, 
■even if it could be seen, and is not recognizable by the visitor of 
fifteen years ago. It seemed then to have an air which it has now 
lost. Beside its brawling stream ; Mexican, and not a mixture; sur- 
rounded by beautiful mountains, with an air that was balm; after 
three months of the hot breezes of the plains, it seemed a haven of 
rest. And the worst of the plains came last, for there is not a mor,e 
God-forsaken tract of soil in the whole journey from Westport to 
the mountains'than that which lies between what is now La Junta 
and Trinidad. 

The flat-top mountain which seems so near, beyond the town, and 
which changes its aspect curiously as seen from different points, is 
Fisher's Peak. It is named for a pioneer. 




(58) 



COLORADO. 59 

On the right, going west, there is a yellow cliff rising brokenly to 
a height of some five or six hundred feet. Good eyes and close 
scrutiny will enable one to see upon this an upright monument. 
Another of the old settlers chose to be buried there. The top of the 
cliff was the scene of an Indian siege during his lifetime, in which 
he took an enforced, but prominent, part, and when he died he was 
carried thither. 

It is at Trinidad that we really begin to climb. It is twenty miles 
to the Raton (Rah-^one: — "a mouse") tunnel, and there are more 
than sixteen hundred feet to climb in those twenty miles. 

Raton Tunnel is an elongated perforation through the back- 
bone of the continent. But this " backbone," so often mentioned in 
contemporaneous literature, is a desultory bit of geography and is 
scattered about over a vast extent of country, and occurs in places 
hundreds of miles apart. This is one of the most prominent pro- 
cesses of the continental spine, and you come as near its exact 
location as you can at any one place on a journey that certainly 
does get around or over the vertebral column somewhere. 

Around Trinidad lies one of the best and most extensive anthra- 
cite coal-beds of the country. You may see the coke-ovens smoking 
in the daytime and glowing at night, any time of the year. This 
railroad has had great luck at striking coal-beds. It has them in 
Kansas ; extensive ones in the mountains just beyond La Junta ; 
here ; on the other side of the tunnel near Blossburg; and conven- 
iently strung along the line almost to El Paso on one hand and Cali- 
fornia on the other. Considering the frantic coughing of two 
enormous engines, the clouds of smoke, the dribbling sand and the 
very perceptible slant, you will conclude that coal in considerable 
quantity is needed just about here. 

While the train is toiling up the steepest portion of the grade just 
east of the tunnel, if the day be fair you will find it to be worth the 
trouble to look backward. At a certain point you will see rising up 
out of the immensity a vision that has often been declared worth the 



60 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



journey thus far; an almost unreal and unearthly panorama of pale 
blue mountains flecked with white against a sky as blue as sapphire. 
The pines and canyons of the lower regions lie between. Over all 
hangs a haze so thin and so ethereal that it gives to the momentary 
picture the semblance of a scene out of some gigantic fairy-land. 

There is something in the mountain scenery of these regions that 
impresses every man. But it can not be put into words, and has 
never yet been either painted or described. Nothing but actual 
presence will answer, and then, on a railroad train, there is but a 
glimpse. One can but sit at a window and take in the general sen- 




A Glance Backward. 

sations. Then, after going over the same route a score of times, 
one will continually be finding something new, and be smitten with 
a species of remorse because he was so stupid as never to have seen 
it before. Much of the best is unfortunately passed in the night. 
The railroad waits for no man as a rule, and when it does it usually 
happens in an uninteresting place. No rhapsodies will be indulged 
in here. They seem puerile when compared with the actual scene. 
The skies of these New Mexican and Arizona regions alone are 
enough to furnish occupation. Perhaps there is nothing like them 
elsewhere in the beautiful world. 



COLORADO. 61 

Raton Tunnel is 7,622 feet above sea-level. It is nearly a mile 
through it, and it continues to be up-grade to the middle of it, and 
then it is downwards for the rest of the way. When you enter the 
darkness of the eastern end you are in Colorado. When in the 
course of a few minutes you emerge into daylight at the opposite 
end, you are in New Mexico. 

Just before entering the tunnel one may see on the mountain-side 
above certain apparently prehistoric remains. They are those of 
the "switchback," by means of which trains were taken over the 
mountains while the tunnel was building. One would think from 
the indifference with regard to it of those who built it and all the 
rest of the line, that a " switchback " over the narrow crest of the 
Raton Mountain, and all the other engineering feats in the neigh- 
borhood of the backbone, were the commonest things in life. In 
truth they are not. Only absolute necessity invented them in the 
later years. The modest men of the times are the civil engineers^ 
They have builded, to stand a thousand years, some of the most 
astonishing of all the monuments of human genius, perseverance 
and energy, and you can not even get them to talk about it. Some 
of them were fighters, too, and knew how to march and camp and 
watch as well as any trained soldier. They did not leave behind 
them a trail of desolation, but of progress, industry and lasting ben- 
efit to the country and the world. 

It is, as is not unusual in human affairs, bard to get up at Raton 
Pass, but it is still harder, in this case, to get down. There was an 
engine to pull, and one to push, in the ascent, and there is now one 
Titanic monster exercising his utmost endeavor in what an engine 
does not like to do — holding back. There is often a thick smoke 
which makes one imagine there must be a hot box; — several of them. 
But there is not ; it is hot tires. The brake-shoes have made the 
rims of all the wheels hot enough to burn the oil with which the 
surface of every car-wheel gets coated, and the resultant smoke 
suggests a smouldering conflagration. 



•62 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



Observing these things one wonders how this and other steep 
grades could be descended without the aid of the air-brake. No 
:stalwart brakeman, with a pick-handle thrust into the spokes of the 
brake-wheel, could hold the shoes to the tires with force enough to 
make them all hot, and yet loosely enough to permit the wheels to 
turn. It is all done now by the engineer, with his thumb and 
finger on a brass cock. There are many contingencies for nervous 
people to think of, but an accident has never happened. It reminds 
one of the curious fact that there is greatly more danger in riding 
from your house to the depot in a hack, or even in walking, than 
there is in the whole of the journey from the Missouri to Los 
Angeles or San Francisco. 




El Llano Estacado. 

But we seem to have quite lost sight of that suggestive T kail with 
which we started out. Well, it is here, more prominently than ever. 
As you toil up the grade east of the tunnel, you may see a house, 
built of adobe and once plastered, but now troubled with an eruptive 
complaint and looking patchy, down in the canyon to the right. 
This was once the place where toll was collected for that part of the 
trail which was a road winding through Raton Pass. The man to 
whom it was a source of revenue still resides there, with his occupa- 
tion as far gone as ever Othello's was. The old track is still visible 
beside his house, but there is no toll to speak of. Through this 
narrow notch in the mountains has screeched many an ox-drawn 



COLORADO. 63 

cart laden with goods from Westport, or Independence, or Lex- 
ington, or Leavenworth. It seems worth while to try to think how 
slowly, according to modern ideas, we have come thus far, and then 
endeavor to substitute for our twenty-eight hours, or less, the old- 
fashioned four months. Not four months of sitting upon red mohair, 
•either. 

The first merchandise coming by this famous route was sent all the 
way from Kaskaskia, Illinois, and as far back as 1804. From 1822 
to 1856, it was an almost continuous traffic, interrupted only by 
Indian raids and our difficulties with Mexico. In 1846 the value of 
the goods carried across the plains and mountains was $1,752,250. 
The sum does not seem large by modern standards, but it required 
a good deal of toil with the means then at hand to do as much, and 
the trail must have been a scene of camps from end to end. This 
traffic employed a large number of men, who became professional in 
it, and could fight Indians, find water and feed, take all the chances 
of the wilderness, and make the round trip within a few hours of a 
given number of days. 

And there was still another road. It left the main trail somewhere 
near where the western line of Kansas now is, and turned southward 
across a place, — a vast country, in fact, — the very name of which 
was a synonym of danger before civilization came, and which is still 
almost unexplored. For this nearer trail to El Paso, and the City 
of Mexico may also be included, lay across El Llano Estacado 
( Va/ino Aistahifrtido, — The Staked Plain), and was in all likelihood the 
very dreariest road ever traveled. The distances were immense, and 
must be made. Water was not plentiful, and Comanches were. It had 
its name from the fact that the early Spaniards — priests, they say — 
had taken pains to mark the first route with stakes, so that others 
might come and they return. 

Well, it is still " The Staked Plain," for it has been staked again, 
this time not by Spaniards, and presumably not by priests. Starting 
from a point on the lines in Southern Kansas, the Santa Fe Route 
5 



64 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



has already built southwestward to the verge of this dreadful coun- 
try, and will eventually cross it. More than this, it is, like the Kansas, 
"desert," — not so bad as believed. There is nothing, no miracle, 
that can so quickly change a country as the advent of a railroad. 
Men of this generation will live to see this paradise of the Comanche 
and the coyote, this hideous wilderness, this unknown dread, covered 
with settlements and rich in spotted herds. 

The northeastern boundary of the old Llano Estacado is what is. 
known as the Pan-Handle. 




Pan-Handle ep iEXAS. 



[HOUGH aside from the narrative of any overland journey, the 
Pan-Handle is so curious a combination of frontier barbar- 
ism and growing civilization (besides being accessible by the same 
lines of railroad), that a brief sketch of it is inserted here. 

It is the extreme northwestern corner of the Lone Star State. 
It is bigger than all the New England States with New Jersey added. 
It is practically, so far, a region without law ; it is a law unto itself. 
Its remote and peculiar population pay little or no attention to the 
Texas Legislature, or Courts, or Governor, or Sheriff. The only 
means of reaching them is to send a company of the Rangers into 
the region. This body of troops is under State pay, and regularly 
enlisted. They go in squads or companies, are fighters to a man, 
and command respect even in the Pan-Handle. There is nothing 
to hinder the whole of the six companies of Rangers being sent 
there at one time. If they should come, that which they were look- 
ing for would very probably be found. So, when a squad of them 
makes its appearance, there are others who go. Cattle are left to 
take care of themselves. No-Mans-Land, Colorado, New Mexico 
and southern Kansas have some distinguished visitors who come on 
horseback. 

Within the confines of the Pan-Handle are mountains, rivers, 
lakes, deep gorges, cliffs, heavy timber, rich farming lands, and un- 
counted miles of rolling prairie. If the country were not fairly well 
watered it could not be used for its present purposes, for it is the 
home of the Cattle Barons. 

This is a picturesque character. He is an Arab by custom and 
instinct. But he is a Bedouin without being a Moslem, and he has 

(65) 



66 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



no religion. He fears not God or the devil, and man only when the 
man is a Texas Ranger. Under his rule there has grown up in the 
Pan-Handle an anomalous condition of society which has never 
been known elsewhere. The term " Baron " is not entirely mis- 




Woman's Rights in the Pan-Handle. 

applied. He is still, notwithstanding the changes taking place since 
the country has been penetrated by the railroad, the sworn enemy of 
the man with the plow. He had, and still often has, a small army of 
retainers, from thirty to two hundred, all armed to the teeth, and all 
believing in his right to all he claimed, which was, almost literally, 



PAN-HANDLE OF TEXAS. 67 

the earth. The Baron did not, and still does not, own any of this 
vast territory. He divided the country up with his lordly neigh- 
bors, and they made common cause. They kept everybody else out. 
They would not permit settlers to come. They paid nothing for the 
use of the land, and never intended to. When they wished they 
fenced it. There was no difficulty in finding men who owned fifty 
thousand head of cattle, claiming of absolute right the " range " they 
had seized upon for them, thousands upon thousands of acres. Their 
ranch-houses were arsenals ; their liegemen were armed retainers. 
It was, and in many cases still is, a complete baronial establishment. 

All this time this unique system of armed communism was as 
much in defiance of all law as though there were no Texas, and no 
United States. These men refused to pay taxes, refused to pay rent 
for the land they occupied, refused to appeal to the State courts for 
any wrong done or suffered within the confines of the Pan-Handle, 
and declined in all respects to recognize the right of the State to 
have anything to do with them. They do not vote. The Pan- 
Handle contains forty-eight or fifty counties. There are thirty-three 
million acres of school-lands, and three million acres of Capitol 
lands within its boundaries. There are also several million acres of 
alternate sections of lands granted to railroads for construction. 
The cattle barons occupy all this. 

Sometimes these offenders are corporations, the chief stockholders 
of which reside in New York, London, Glasgow, Paris, or Berlin. 
The State of Texas adopted a curious plan for building a capitol. 
She' owns land in any quantity, for when she entered the Union by 
her own volition, and by annexation, she retained possession of all 
her lands. She has a homestead law of her own. A syndicate was 
given three million acres to build a capitol. This syndicate con- 
verted most of these lands into a huge range. It is already worth 
ten millions of dollars. 

The following story is told by a correspondent of the St. Louis 
Globe- Democrat^ and is illustrative of the curious doings that may 



68 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

occur when the "desert" begins to be redeemed to civilization. The 
story of the frontier, never half told, is a very strange one, illustra- 
tive cf all the varieties of action that may be prompted by the bar- 
baric selfishness of men: 

"The largest range in the Pan-Handle, perhaps, is that controlled by Goodnight & 
Adair. This firm controls over a million acres, and perhaps does not own a thou- 
sand acres all told. Their chief ranch is the Palo Duro, situated in Armstrong 
County, with Clarendon, Donley County, as post-office town. The Palo Duro 
ranch embraces fully 600,000 acres, and covers nearly all the good pasture land in 
Armstrong, Donley, Randall, Briscoe and Swisher Counties. It is fenced on the 
west mostly by a natural precipice, on the east with barbed wire, and on the north 
and south is guarded by line riders. There are about 75,000 head of cattle on this 
ranch. They are fed almost exclusively on free grass, or, as it is called in Texas, the 
"children's grass" Charles Goodnight is the manager of the ranch. He is a 
strong, rugged, fairly educated man, and enjoys the distinction of wearing his real 
name. He moved from Colorado to Palo Duro canyon, in the Pan-Handle of Texas, 
about the lime the civil war broke out. Adair, the other member of the firm, is an 
Irishman, a landlord and an Orangeman. He does not stay in Ireland much, nor 
does he spend much of his valuable time in this country. He is in a perennial row 
with his Irish tenants. When the legislature of Texas passed the lease law, and 
made it an offense to inclose public lands, or private lands without the consent of 
the owner, the land board called on Mr. Goodnight to put up six cents an acre for 
about 500,000 acres cf school lands that his herds fed on, and that his fences and 
his cowboys held exclusively for his use and benefit. Goodnight flatly refused to 
put up. The attorney-general notified him that he was violating the law in main- 
taining fences around public lands. Goodnight ignored the warning. The attor- 
ney-general concluded that he would make a test case with Goodnight, and made 
preparations to proceed to the Pan- Handle and have the cattle baron indicted. Then 
Goodnight got in some fine work. He had Armstrong and Donley Counties organ- 
ized, and, under the law, certain other counties were attached to them for judicial 
purposes. The foreman of one of his ranges was maJe sheriff of Donley County, 
and another of his foremen was elected sheriff of Armstrong County. Let it be 
remembered that every person residing in Armstrong and Donley Counties were vas- 
sals of Goodnight. His employes were elected clerks, assessors, collectors, treas- 
urers, school-superintendents, county judges and county attorneys. Goodnight 
took a briefless attorney from Mobeetie, transplanted him at Clarendon, in Donley 
County, and had him elected district judge. When the machinery of the law was 



PAN-HANDLE OF TEXAS. 



69 



•complete, court commenced, grand and petit-jurors were summoned, and everything 
set in motion. Goodniglit himself was made foreman of the grand-jury. The 
county attorney presented an indictment against Goodnight for maintaining a fence 
around public land. The grand-jury brought in a true bill against Goodnight — him- 
self, be it remembered, being the foreman and his employes being members of the 
grand-jury — and he went to trial. He was acquitted, of course, and a few days 
later, when the attorney-general arrived at Clarendon with some costly counsel in 
his train to help him prosecute Goodnight, they found they were headed off. Good- 
night was tried and acquitted and could not be placed in jeopardy twice. The 



,. ,vy,)j; ^0 



,\\l/ 



.•■,..,^V,1 







-^^^tiviV/M^;^;y,„ 






A Cowboy. 



attorney-general stormed around, denounced the proceeding as a humbug, but was 
completely beaten, and narrowly escaped being imprisoned for contempt of court. 
At the last session of the Texas legislature the house passed a resolution calling 
upon the governor to remove the judge from office for this proceeding, but the sen- 
ate, being pretty well controlled by the cattle barons and other corporate influences, 
refused to concur after a stormy debate. The judge is still in office, and so are the 
other officers selected by Goodnight for his counties. 

It is no misnomer to call Goodnight a baron. He is one in reality. He owns 
all the school-houses, all the churches, all the buildings in Armstrong and 



70 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Donley Counties. He maintains two school-teachers and two preachers at his own 
expense. He does not allow any liquor to be sold in either of his counties, and 
when a cowboy becomes obstreperous he is ordered to move out of the barony, and 
if he refuses Mr. Goodnight's sheriff arrests or kills him and Mr. Goodnight's judge 
sends him to jail or holds an inquest on him. Other of the Pan-Handle barons 
are now attempting to organize their baronies " according to law " a la Goodnight, 
but so far have not been very successful. Goodnight has not paid a cent of rent to> 
.the State yet. At every legislative session an effort is made to amend the law 
so that the venue in suits for rent may be changed from the county where the 
violations of law occur to the State capital, but Goodnight and the cattle barons- 
have up to this time been strong enough to defeat it. As long as the trial must 
take place in the vicinity it is safe to say that Mr. Goodnight and the other 
Pan-Handle barons will not contribute much to the public school fund." 

But the old times are passing away. The 30,000 nomads who now 
inhabit the Pan-Handle must succumb to a new power that does not 
enforce its edicts by writs and in courts ; the power of immigration^ 
the forerunner of which is the locomotive. The iron pioneer has. 
shrieked the death-knell of lawlessness wherever it has so far gone. 
The " Farewell, festive cuss!" of the Western newspapers must soon 
be said to all the cowboys. The case of the Pan-Handle, a rich, 
country that must as certainly be settled by farmers as it is certain 
that it is there, is up to date a peculiar one. But it will go with the 
rest. Women will come. That is the sign of doom. American 
women go to church. Preachers will come. Children will be there, 
the heralds of the little white school-houses that will shine on the 
hills, as they do m Kansas. The process will be short, the time 
brief. It will not be ten or twenty years, but four or five. Those 
who have not seen the wonderful process have no idea of the aston- 
ishing rapidity with which the wilderness may be transformed. 




Exiei 



(^ O far as its place 
in the histor}' of 
American civilization is 
concerned, New Mex- 
ico is among the oldest, 
of the few old things 
we have to boast of. 

It is, or it was a very 
few years ago, very for- 
eign. There was not 
in all its mountam realm a single idea that owned the least kinship 
to American advancement. Spain had, by a transmigration as curi- 
ous as any theory advanced by Pythagoras, transferred her Sancho 
Panzas, with a sprinkling of Don Quixotes, to this region. It wa.s. 
the northern extension of the Latin empire established by the con- 

(71) 



^3B?pP'*'«Pw^®'r 



72 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

quest of Mexico, which within the memory of Hving men existed in 
full vigor on the main land of this continent. The place you may 
refer to on any map, or on the time-table, called " Wagon Mound," 
was the site of a frontier Mexican custom-house, whose collections 
were supposed to find their way into the national money-box in the 
distant City of Mexico. Of course, in this empire were included 
California, most of Arizona, parts of Kansas and New Mexico, and 
all of Texas. A fact much more curious than the falling of these 
vast possessions into the hands of the foreordained and pre- 
destinated Yankee, is the other fact that within thirty years they 
have become more valuable in dollars and cents, or in escudos and 
dobloncs if you will, than all that is left of Mexico, with Old Spain 
thrown in. 

Notwithstanding the encroachments of the Americans carried 
hither by the railroads. New Mexico is still full of nooks and corners 
where eternal peace has her abiding place and broods over the hum- 
blest and happiest homes in America. In these, the adventurous wan- 
derer will still find the cumbrous carts with wooden wheels, like those 
of the car of Juggernaut, and which it is against the custom of the 
country and religious faith ever to grease. There, the people still live 
in the homely and most comfortable poor men's houses ever known, 
built of the sun-dried bricks called adobe (ad-^-bay). There they 
still plow with the Egyptian implement which is little better than 
a sharpened stick, and which has come down to them legitimately, 
and without infringement of copyright, from that far Arabia who 
is still, at this day, the venerable ancestress of more things in New 
Mexico than Columbia is, prolific mother though she be. 

These simple people have another thing, of more importance than 
a plow, that is also Arabic or Spanish, which are interchangeable 
terras. They are courteous; they only require half-decent treatment 
at the hands of the man who habitually calls them " Greasers," and 
who has not so far given them that, to be found kindly, hospitable, 
singularly intelligent for their circumstances, and lacking so much 



NEW MEXICO. 73 

■of being barbarians that the graces of life seem to have singularly 
flourished among them. 

New Mexico is a land of brilliant sunshine, beautiful mountains, 
valleys picturesque and rich, blue distances, wide pasture-lands, 
pines, pure air, and general freedom from disease. There no 
dyspepsia, no malaria, no epidemic disease is possible, and all the 
general pleasures and advantages to be derived from climate are in 
full force. 

Of late years ranches have been established in many valleys, and 
tens of thousands of cattle graze on the mountaia slopes. The 




An Unprogressive Granger. 






■country is rich in minerals and mines, and the general hopes always 
attached to the mining interest divert the minds of the majority of 
the foreign population ; for, if it is possible to be a foreigner in one's 
own country, then the American is a foreigner among the Mexicans. 

New Mexico is almost as square in outline as the rest of her 
sisters, being on her eastern boundary 345 miles long, and on her 
western 390 miles, with an average breadth, east and west, of 335 
miles. 

The Territory contains 121,201 square miles, or 77,568,640 acres. 
There are only about a dozen very large counties. 



74 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



All of New Mexico is a series of plateaux, lying at an average 
elevation of about 5,000 feet. Out of these plateaux rise the mount- 
ain ranges and peaks, sometimes to an elevation of more than 12,000 
feet above the sea. 

Where the plateau in any case is narrow, it of course becomes a 
valley, often very fertile. The valley of the Rio Grande, (Re-oh 
6^rfl!«-day dail Nor-tdiy, " Big River of the North ") is a river valley in 
all respects, with a rich alluvial soil. This is the principal river of 
the country, and rises in Colorado at an elevation of nearly 12,000 

feet. It runs through the 
middle of the Territory 
north and south, and must 
some day become one of 
the most fruitful valleys 
in the world. The diffi- 
culty now is that it is 
mostly occupied by the 
Mexican population, and, 
in localities, by the PueblO' 
communities. The land 
is held under the Spanish 
grant system, and what 
Americans and American 
law consider good titles 
can not be readily given. This is the case with regard to other 
portions of the Territory, and constitutes the chief reason why the 
growth of so fine a mountain and valley country has been retarded. 
Nevertheless, the Territory contains about sixty million acres of 
Government land not covered by grant or adverse title of any kind. 
Most of these unoccupied lands are available for grazing purposes, 
at least, and a considerable proportion for agriculture. The country 
generally is not nearly so hopeless-looking as Southern California 
was a dozen years ago, and the climate is almost as good. The 




El Hogar Domestico. 



NEW MEXICO. 75 

Artesian well, and other plans for obtaining water, have not been 
tried with any persistency, and thousands of acres will be redeemed 
and found to be among the most fruitful and valuable in the world 
when they are. Aside from this, there is over most of the Territory 
a well-defined rainy season. None of the water falling there has ever 
been utilized. The Mexican idea that the land must be soaked by 
ditches to raise anything, has been until the last year or two accepted 
as a fact. It has been found not to be true in other similar cases. 
Intelligent methods of cultivation will raise fine crops on much of 
the Government land now obtainable. Congressional action in regard 
to land titles, as applying to lands not now owned by the United 
States, will be a boon when it comes; -but one-half the energy and 
skill and money that have been expended upon California would 
produce results almost as astonishing here. 

Twenty years ago the country wa§ considered almost entirely water- 
less. The soldiers who chased the Apaches obtained their supplies 
long distances apart, and generally from what were called "tanks;" 
hollow rocks where water gathered in limited quantities when it rained. 
Where the town of Deming now stands was one of these waterless 
regions. A few miles east of there the little Miembres River goes 
entirely out of sight in the sand. Water was conceded to be an 
absolute impossibility, either by digging, boring or witchcraft, over 
all that country. 

Now the passer-by on that branch will observe that Deming is full 
■of windmills. There is an ample supply of water out of shallow wells. 

There is little or no drainage to the country; at least not sufifi- 
cient to account for what becomes of the water that falls, and that 
melts from snow in the mountains. 

The plateaux are fillings. The spaces between the mountains 
and ranges that now stand up out of them were in the beginning 
V-shaped, and came together at the bottom. They filled up with 
the wash from the mountains; the boulders and gravel falling first 
and lowest; then the soil, which is disintegrated rock. The surface 



76 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

of this filling Is, now the immense tracts a level country character- 
istic of the region. 

The rainfall and melted snow goes every year down the sides of 
the slopes and sinks into the soil. It will be found, when bored for, 
in the gravel where once was the trough between mountains or 
ranges. Sometimes it may be near the surface ; at other places it 
rnay be hundreds of feet below. 

Geologists have frequently affirmed that this is the first portion of 
the American continent that lifted itself above a wide and sailorless 
sea. There are other scientists who state that the eldest of the 
successive civilizations existed here, and that there was a civilized 




What becomes of the W^ter. 

people with arts and a steadfast government, when our fore- 
fathers were savages under the oaks of ancient Britain or in the 
woods of Germany. Be this as it may, the country is very old 
from even our standpoint. The native inhabitants of New Mexico- 
and Arizona numbered many thousands when the country was first 
visited by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. 

It was first visited by one Nunez, a Spaniard, who was followed 
by numerous others of his kind; Cabeza de Vaca ("Cow's Head," 
an aristocratic Spanish family name): Espejo: Es-/^j'-ho ("Looking- 
Glass," also a family name); Onate; Coronado (" The Crowned," — 
family name). It is not possible, nor important, to know all these 
people. They came, as usual, for gold, and, as usual not only with 
Spaniards but with all the rest of us, they did not find much of it 
lying around loose. 



NEW MEXICO. 



77 



Before the end of the sixteenth century a permanent settlement 
had been made. Santa Fe (" San-tah Fay day San H^wan ; — " the 
Holy Faith of St. John ") was the place selected. The town, or the 
immediate vicinity, had been a kind of political and religious capital 
for an indefinite time before the Spaniards came. These wonder- 
ful explorers began at Santa Fe, and at San Augustine, Florida, 
about the same time ; — so nearly together at the end of the fifteenth 
century that very few people know precisely which of the two towns 
is the oldest. But Santa Fe was the capital of an organized com- 
munity and of a form of civilization so long before that date that 
there can be little doubt that it is not only the most ancient 
city still existing in this 
country, but that it is 
also one of the most 
ancient capitals of the 
world. It still remains 
largely what it always 
was. It does not de- 
cay; on the contrary, it 
is almost spoiled by 
modern brick houses. 
It was a much more 
interesting place twenty years ago than it is now. But now, — to 
traverse the seventeen miles from the station of Lamy to Santa Fe 
is one of the pleasantest mountain railroad rides in the country, and 
there is still interest and oddity enough to occupy the few hours one 
will stay there. 

But the actual, original explorers of New Mexico ; — the people who 
came to stay; — were the Franciscan priests. The difficulties they 
encountered were appalling. There is a very grave doubt if the 
original Mexican — whom we now call the Pueblo — has ever been 
converted. If so, it is not a thorough regeneration, but a mixture of 
every Christian belief with his ancient religion. This Pueblo lived 




New Mexico Oven. 




Pueblo Citizen (from a Photograph). 

(78) 



NEW MEXICO. 79 

under just laws, justly administered. He had a system of worship 
and a defined belief. He was, like the modern Chinaman, very 
hard to convince. Often, like the Chinaman, he complied with the 
forms, but maintained his private belief. He clung to the religion of 
his fathers, and hated that of the conquerors, and kept killing 
Franciscans from time to time. 

After he had been preached to and enslaved for almost a century; 
— for the two things went together; — he in 1680 rose in rebellion. 
All Spaniards suffered together. All the foreigners who were not 
killed fled toward Paso del Norte. 

[This is where the city of El Paso, Texas, now stands. Fah-so dail 
Nor-tdiy is a rock-bottom ford on the Rio Grande, and the name 
means " Pass of the North." It is the ancient gateway of Mexican 
trade, used when New Mexico was an Aztec dependency, as it after- 
ward was a Spanish and Mexican one. An ox-team and cart can be 
driven without dififiiculty from Santa Fe to the City of Mexico ; — 
nearly two thousand miles through a country all mountains.] 

The Spaniards did not regain a foothold for several years, and 
after many unsuccessful attempts. And then they could not retain 
it with any comfort until they did what no Spaniard has ever been 
known to do before or since ; they retracted. They abandoned the 
mines, and recalled the infamous edict by which the natives had 
been unlawfully enslaved. 

This little bit of history has, strangely enough, never excited 
remark. The Spaniards have never been in the habit of doing such 
things, and have lost nearly all their immense possessions on this 
side of the sea by not doing it. The poor Puebio, always respected 
by those who know him, but still a miserable " Indian," wears this 
one historic feather in his dilapidated hat ; he made the Spaniard 
come down. 

Neither is it generally known, or thought of if known, that the 
'■'■ Santo oficio, " the " Holy Inquisition," held its horrible functions 
at one time here. This was before the 1680 rebellion. With 

6 



80 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



slavery, a changed religion, and the tortures and punishments of the 
Inquisition to enforce it, the Indian cup must have been as nearl}' 
full as it has ever been since, even under our administration of 
Indian affairs. 




/ 



Pueblo Mother and Babe (from a Photograph). 



It is also not usually thought of that of the full blood of the 
Pueblos, of some of whose villages you will catch glimpses from the 
car-windows, was the ablest and best of all the presidents of Mexico, 



NEW MEXICO. 81 

Benito Juarez. The present president, Diaz, possesses only a little 
less of the Indian blood. 

It is also an historical fact worth remembering that of the twelve 
million inhabitants of Mexico about ten million are Mexicans; that is, 
Aztecs; Pueblos. Now, these people have had the life, the courage, 
the national tenacity, to survive a Spanish occupancy that lasted 
from the invasion of Cortez to 182 1, and then achieve absolute free- 
dom, modernized into a republican form of government. Since 1821 
they have repelled, under the leadership of the Pueblo, Juarez, the 
tripartite effort of the European powers to establish an empire on 
their soil ; a story that everybody is familiar with, but which few 
think of in this connection. Perhaps the virility of the Pueblo may 
yet show itself in the making of a great country out of Mexico. 
Stranger things have happened. 

That New Mexico should be strewn with ruins is to be expected. 
They lie in nooks and corners everywhere. But they tell little. 
The documents by which their history might be ascertained were 
largely destroyed at the time of the rebellion. The general conclu- 
sion by every visitor is that it is, historically, a very old country, 
and details are not sought. Perhaps they are unimportant. The 
■old days and the old life are largely swallowed up in the new. To 
the average American antiquity is a bore, and the present dollar is 
the only item of importance. 

Our interest in New Mexico begins in 1846, with the occupation 
^of the capital by General Kearney. This was followed by the con- 
clusion of the Mexican War and the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. 
We should unquestionably have held it just the same, but the 
treaty placed the matter beyond dispute. 

[Guadaloupe Hidalgo is a village about seven miles out of 
the City of Mexico. There is a rambling adobe country-house 
there, in which the commissioners resided and the celebrated 
treaty was signed. The village, and not the City of Mexico, 
probably became unwittingly famous as the scene of a very shrewd 



83 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

transaction in real estate through some freak of diplomatic 
etiquette.] 

But previous to this military occupation we had some doings quiie 
after the Spanish fashion. Our Captain Pike ventured into the 
country by mistake in 1805-6. He excited the suspicion of the 
Spaniards, who courteously arrested him, and seem to have marched 
him pretty much all over New and Old Mexico. He did not get 
back again until 1807. 

[Zebulon Montgomery Pike seems to have entirely deserved the 
magnificent natural monument referred to on a preceding page. 
He was born a soldier, served his apprenticeship in arms in his 
father's regiment, was the most intelligent and undaunted explorer 
of his times, and was finally killed in battle under his country's flag. 
A careful reading of his life and explorations would not come amiss 
to the average youth of these times.] 

New Mexico is the land of resorts. The mountain scenery, pure 
air, brilliant sunshine, and dry climate make it so. There are innumer- 
able nooks and corners, in addition to the advertised resorts, where 
one would like to spend a summer on his own account. Las Vegas 
Hot Springs, a resort near the town of Las Vegas, is one of the 
most attractive. The Manitou resorts, near Colorado Springs, and 
reached by a branch of the line from La Junta, are also very popular. 
There are others coming forward not as yet so well known; Jemez 
Springs, and Cascade, Santa Fe, and others. 

For the mere purpose of crossing the country, its beauty is not 
lost. It is a pleasant land, full of charming glimpses of sky and 
mountain, and dotted with sufficient population of all kinds to 
keep it from seeming lonesome. It does not much matter to us, 
perhaps, what its resources may be. The landscape is ours. 

Raton is the first town beyond the Pass. It is important in 
being a dining station in a region where a good appetite is the de- 
cided rule. 

Part of the importance of Raton does not, however,, appear 



NEW MEXICO. 83 

upon the surface, as it is the centre of a considerable cattle 
industry. 

Just below the town is a spur running to Blossburg; — another 
coal mine. There may be a capitalist along, and he may be inter- 
ested to know that in the matter of coal New Mexico is a second 
Pennsylvania. One-fourth of the whole area of i2'r,ooo square 
miles is underlaid with coal of the best quality. The measures of 
which the outcrop was seen near Trinidad, extend unbroken for two 
hundred and fifty miles. The only anthracite coal-beds found in 
accessible and paying quantity west of the AUeghanies are in Santa 
Fe County. 

The cattle-business, of which the town of Raton has been alluded 
to as a centre, has attracted thither so distinguished an individual as 
Ex-Senator Dorsey, and with him is reputed to be interested Col. 
Robert Ingersoll, of the silvery tongue. Just below the town, where 
an endless wire fence extends on each side of the road, is the Dorsey 
ranch. 

In sight, and not seeming to be sixty-five miles away, is the 
■queerly-shaped mountain known as Wagon Mound, referred to on 
a previous page. 

At Watrous, a little station that owes its greatest importance to 
some pretty scenery, the train enters the wide, green plateau named 
by the Spaniards Las Vegas; — "The Meadows." This is one of 
the most extensive and beautiful of the New Mexican plateaux. So 
wide is it, and fenced by mountains on all sides, that it is difficult to 
think of it as having a general elevation of more than six thousand 
feet; as being an extensive mountain-top in fact. 

The plain extends from here down to the Glorieta Mountains, 
some sixty-five miles, with a width proportionate. 

Las Vegas is a town which takes its name from its location, and 
is where the traveler is expected again to indulge his appetite. It also 
has an old town and a new; the old one being out of sight, with the 
usual retiring disposition of all New Mexican towns after the rail- 




ilil,V#iM* 



(84) 



NEW MEXICO. 85 

road comes. The place is of considerable commercial importance, 
with a population of several thousand. 

There is a branch at Las Vegas, of course, but this time it is not 
to a coal mine. Six miles away, and reached by this branch, is the 
watering-place and health-resort known as Las Vegas Hot Springs. 
It is a mountain nook where there are a large number of hot and 
cold springs, a beautiful hotel, extensive bath-houses, and all the 
appliances necessary to tired people and invalids. The surround- 
ings of this spot are very attractive, and the waters have a wide rep- 
utation for medicinal virtue. 

[Lahs- Fay-gsihs is the correct pronunciation of this name, con- 
trary to the usual custom of saying " Loss Vaygus."] 

It is unfortunate to leave Las Vegas after supper on a moonless 
night, because the Glorieta Mountains are not far ahead, and they 
are worth looking at. But time-tables continually change, and the 
reader may dine at Las Vegas and sup somewhere else ; — an arrange- 
ment much the pleasantest. There may be a moon ; and when there 
is it is usually very bright. 

The scenery of the Glorieta Pass is by no means sublime. Yet it 
scarcely comes under the head of " prett}^," which the young lady of 
the party is sure to apply to it. We have now traveled several hun- 
dred miles without having traversed a forest of any kind except 
when we entered the mountains just beyond Trinidad this morning. 
Here are the children of the mountains stretching away in thick 
undulations as far as one can see. The train threads a rocky canyon, 
pufifing and twisting up a winding grade only a little less steep than 
that at Raton Pass. Away to the north the mountains lie piled, in 
Summer green ; in Winter green-and-white. The air is cool, even 
in midsummer, and at intervals there is a rushing stream. The 
whole pass, some thirty miles long, is a scene of beauty so immedi- 
ately at hand that one has a desire to get out and walk through it. 
Some of It is like a natural park which no artificial effort could equal. 
Some of It is made of alternate rocks and deep gorges. Some of it 



86 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



is cliffs, and it is all pines. The summit is the little town called 
Glorieta ; a place where there is nothing but two houses, a saloon, 
and scenery ; and from there there is another case of air-brakes and 
holding back. Half way down is visible through the trees, and in 
the Valley of the Pecos, the venerable and massive ruin of what is 
called Old Pecos Church. When found by modern adventurers it 
had been roofless so long that there was no tradition of when it was 
not so, but the adobe walls, six or eight feet thick, were still stand- 
ing, and in a surprisingly good state of preserva- 
^^■^^v.U-. . tion. A few years ago the interior was strewn 

with cedar beams, quaintly carved, 
-'-^^ -^ but these have long since been car- 

ried away. 

-^^ _, Notwithstanding any hints 

at history that may be noted 

^^« on previous pages, places 

Ts--''~ '-i./ ^j iji^g Pecos Church go far to 

- convince one that this coun- 

'^''i'' //// ^^y really has no history. 

ifl^p-^^ You must guess all the de- 

> tails of the nast. There is 




Youth, Sunshir.e and Leisure. 



evidence that the Pueblos 
were here a thousand years 
perhaps, before the Spaniards came. The dimly-defined ruins of an 
extensive town lie around the church: When Cabeza de Vaca 
crossed the country in 1536, not knowing where he was, he found 
this place. It was called " A-gu-yu," and the church was after- 
wards built to convert the A-gu-yu-ans. About 1540 is the nearest 
guess that can be made as to the date of its erection. These old 
walls have been nearly 350 years in crumbling, and, merely dried 
mud in the first place, they still remain. 

The ruins around it are perhaps more interesting than the church 
is, since they have the effect of giving a mere undecipherable hint 



NEW MEXICO. 



87 



•of a departed people, of whom less is actually known than of the old- 
est of the Egyptians. All the valleys are strewn with such remains, 
more or less distinct, and all indications point to the fact that these 
and the scattered communities of the Pueblos of to-day are of the 
same people. 

Coming to names again, as is frequently necessary in this country, 
one wonders why a stream should have been named Pecos, {-Pay- 
cose) which means simply "freckles"; — not spots or spotted, like a 
•cow, but plain, ordinary freckles. It is of no importance, but some 




Primitive Industry 



■of these names are subjects for a good deal of harmless guessing. 
As they decline to say "//^^z;^!^ " ('wavas) for eggs, in Mexico, and 
call them always " blanquillos," (blan-^r<?/-yose) literally "little 
white things," so may they have called this mountain stream, for 
instance, just "freckles," as an allusion sufficiently distinct to the 
speckled sides of the mountain trout. 

The western end of Glorieta Pass is called Apache canyon. 
There are many Apache canyons scattered through the Rocky 
mountain region. This is one of them. This red devil was, in his 



88 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

prime, very nearly ubiquitous, and was a famous lurker in the narrow 
canyons where his prey wou4d be obliged to pass, and there he made 
an easy fight of it, and got himself as much glory as though it had 
occurred in the open field. 

But the Apache did not have a monopoly of this beautiful nook 
of the mountain world for fighting purposes. A very sharp little 
battle occurred here in 1847, between a body of General Kearney's 
troops and the Mexicans. Another occurred between the Federals 
and the Confederate troops in 1862. Details of these little battles, 
or of the Indian skirmishes or massacres from which the place takes, 
its name, are now hardly to be obtained. 

Just beside the western end of this canyon, and near the track, 
stands a little tenantless adobe building. There is apparently 
no interest attaching to it. But it was the school-house of a 
missionary priest named Lamy, now Archbishop of Santa F6. The 
Indians are gone, leaving only this little building as an evidence 
of practical modern effort, a companion to the ancient ruin not far 
away. 

Lamy is the station from which the branch runs to the city of 
Santa F6, seventeen miles. It is passed during the night by one 
train, but during the afternoon by another. Persons desiring to- 
visit Santa F6 can arrange very easily, if upon the wrong train, by 
stopping a few hours at Las Vegas, and visiting the Hot Springs, 
taking the proper train froiji there to Santa Fe, and returning to 
Lamy and continuing the journey. 

Glorieta Pass is the real water-shed of this region, and the slope 
from the summit down the western side is the entrance to the Rio 
Grande Valley. Up to this point all the streams flow southward and 
eastward, flowing into the Gulf some hundreds of miles further to the 
northward than the Rio Grande does between the Texan and Mexi- 
can towns of Brownsville and Matamoras. 

The name Glorieta (Glo-re-«?/^^/'-tah, not Gloriettd) is a Spanish 
word that may be construed to mean a pleasant place. A bower, a 



NEW MEXICO. 



89* 



house in a garden, a structure made of open wood-work and covered 
with vines, is called a " glorieta." 

There is a huge flat-topped mountain visible on both sides of the 
pass, and often a prominent object at the distance of fifty to eighty- 
miles, that the tourist often wishes to know about. This is " Star- 




starvation Peak, 
vation Peak." There is, of course, a story connected with it^ 
from which its name is derived. In fact, there are several stories. 
So much do the narratives vary that you can't tell, after hearing 
several of them, whether it was Indians or Mexicans who were 
driven there, and eventually starved to death by siege. The starving 
and the besieging is laid alternately upon either party. Let us. 



'90 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

content ourselves with the hope that the sufferers were Apaches, 
and that none of them ever got down again. 

There are always, for some reason, three gigantic crosses on the 
summit, except when, as sometimes happens, one or more of them has 
been blown down. They seem to be maintained there by the cus- 
tom of the country, and in commemoration of the event from which 
the mountain derives its not very attractive name. 

A few miles beyond Lamy you enter the actual valley, and the 
scene again very decidedly changes. It is about as foreign as Persia 
■or Nubia, and, indeed, not very unlike the latter in appearance. You 
have now reached, if you ever will, the land " where it is always after- 
noon." Beside the track is the stubborn old life of the Spanish 
peasant, as poor, as happy, and as quaint as it ever was at home. It 
is a land of ancient and changeless custom. The Mexican village 
is there, drowsy in the sunshine, with all its " improvements " made 
and all its hopes realized, as ignorant of the meaning of the wcrd 
"boom" as Babylon is. There is something oriental, about every 
Mexican house. It is either built around a square, or is a modifi- 
cation of that plan. In this square should be stored all the family 
property, and the goats, fowls, donkeys and pigs should be there 
also at night. This house is always of adobe, and almost always 
■clean. Its floor is of hard-packed earth, and its roof as well. It is 
not necessarily the dwelling of abject poverty ; not a hovel. Indeed, 
that is seldom the case. It is simply the house of the country, and 
neither the proper soil to make the bricks of, nor the climate which 
will permit of their durability, exists elsewhere. 

The village composed of these houses is a curious place when 
seen for the first time by American eyes. But you can never arrive 
at the true inwardness of it without living in one for a while, and 
having some knowledge of Spanish. Seen at a distance of two or 
three miles, it looks like an unburned brick-kiln. Close at hand, it 
is the only place in this wide country where there is no newspaper, 
no advertising, no schemes, no boom, no prospective rise in the 




Picnic Party at Las Vegas Hot Spring 

(91) 



-92 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

price of lots, no worry. Life goes on undisturbed by any of the 
changes. There are births and weddings and deaths ; that is all. 
Away from the railroad, the village street is a path originally made by 
that accomplished pathfinder, the Mexican donkey. It is a mountain 
nook, or a little valley, or a place beside a spring. There are no 
lawyers or doctors there, or any politics. They are rural swains, 
and the only scholar is the priest, and he often does not know too 
much. They are a people thoroughly accomplished in their own way 
■of life. They have no theories. There are no experiments to try. 
Their continued existence and prosperity is certain. The lads and 
lasses grow up and marry and die. They often live to a very old 
age. Surrounded by mountains, under a lovely sky, industrious in 
their way, and frugal, the people of the average Mexican village 
have a recipe for happiness the possession of which the anxious 
American does not envy them. But it would do him good, never- 
theless. 

But they are not barbarians. There is an easy courtesy, a perfect 
understanding of even the statelier forms of politeness, that is aston- 
ishing. It is an inheritance, for this man is, after all, and after the 
lapse of more than three long centuries of isolation, a Spanish peasant. 
He is, in manners, language and religion, what he was in 1598. The 
Spaniard is the true Bourbon of the world, and the Bourbons were 
Spaniards. He never changes. This man in only isolated cases is 
mixed with the Pueblo. The usual idea is that the peasant of New 
Mexico, and the same class in Old Mexico, are alike. They are 
very different. In the first case he is, almost without mixture, a 
Spaniard ; in the last he is, equally without mixture, a Pueblo, an 
Aztec, a Toltec, an Indian ; — whatever you choose to call the 
original people of the country. There are reasons why this should 
be so, too long and speculative for discussion in a book of travel. 

And here you come upon a string of names that at once indicate 
the foreignness of the region. Here is Bernal, and later on Ber- 
nalillo. Ber-/ia/, a common boy's name. He was originally a 




Canyon near Las Vegas Hot Springs. 

(93) 



94 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Saint; Bern-ah-Iee/yo, is simply "little Bernal." San Miguel (Sahn- 
Me-gai7) is St. Michael. Lamy (La/i-my) is French ; the name of 
the Archbishop of Santa Fe, Ortiz, [Or-tecs), a family name. Los. 
Cerrillos, (Lose Cer-(?i'/-yose), little hills ; — Ccrro, a hill; t7/o, I'fo, ico, 
&c., being Spanish diminutives, used wherever possible. Albu- 
querque; — originally Al^t'rquerque (^/-boo-ker-kee), a family name, 
and somewhat historical as having been borne by a Spanish general. 
Isleta; should be Ysleta; (Ees-Zaj'-tah), a little island. Rosario,. 
Ro-.fa//-re-oh) a rosary. Elota (E-/^-tah) a girl's name. Algodones, 
(Al-go-^/<f5-nais) cotton ; cotton-lands. Alameda, (Ah-lah-^w^jj'-dah) a 
shaded walk; a road lined with shade trees. 

Of such names the country is full. They occur at frequent inter- 
vals between here and California. They are nearly always mispro- 
nounced, and still more frequently their meaning is misunderstood. 
Very often some trivial circumstance, long since forgotten, and, 
indeed, never worthy of remembrance, gave rise to them. They 
often smack of saints and sacredness. Li Spain it is not uncom- 
mon to name a steamboat or a factory after the Holy Ghost, and 
here, as there, children are often named Jesus. These people will 
also often turn the picture of the Virgin to the wall if they intend to 
do anything particularly bad. It is all of a piece ; they are not 
really very pious, except as a matter of names and form. 

Isleta, named above, is just south of the junction where through 
cars leave the main line of road which goes southward to El Paso, 
and are carried westward over the Atlantic and Pacific, (part of the 
system) and across Arizona and the greater part of California, to the 
Pacific coast. But Isleta is also a Pueblo capital, being the largest 
and most industrial of the towns now remaining. It presents a very 
pleasant picture of contented, though communal, industry. Nobody 
is poor, everybody is contented; but one who knew the place some 
years ago can not help wondering that it should retain so much of its 
old character after the railroad came; a coming full as strange to these 
Indians as that of the expected Montezuma could be. There is. 



NEW MEXICO. 



95 



something peculiar about the ways and habits of thought of these 
old races. They seem to possess in a degree not even conceivable 
ty the Saxon, a faculty for minding their own affairs. They do not 
know; they do not wish to know. They do not change, and are not 
even affected by the daily presence of that most far-reaching and bene- 
ficent of the triumphs of human genius, a railroad. You may people 
the desert, you may build cities, you may increase the values of a 
whole region a hundred per cent, in a single year, you may make 
boundless wealth in places where in all the ages before there was 
nothing but wind and silence, but by the same means there are at 
least four races you can not 
affect in the least; Spaniards, 
Chinese, Indians, and Pueblos. 
They all accept it as an unin- 
vestigated fact. They do not 
often look at it, and very seldom 
ride on it. They do not even 
resent it. The old Pueblo who 
plods beside the track with his 
string of laden donkeys does 
not even turn his head. He 
who prunes his vines or digs 
amongst his onions or chile, does not look up. The railroad amid 
these vineyards is a staring and startling incongruity, and there is 
a sense in which it has spoiled New Mexico. 

Albuquerque, where in the watches of the night you will feel 
yourself being pushed about and coupled and uncoupled, is the 
metropolis of the upper Rio Grande valley. The old town is, of 
•course, behind and quite out of sight; the new and the old together 
have a population of some twelve thousand. The electric light 
flashes there now, and all the life you see is of the very newest 
American cast. But, if you could build the civilization of 1888 as an 
annex to Jerusalem, and still leave the old city of the priests and 




Sitting in the Sun. 




(96) 



NEW MEXICO. 97 

prophets as it is, and could walk from one place into the other when 
you wished, you wotild have nothing more strange than you can see 
now if you wander about Albuquerque in daylight and at leisure. 

The breakfast station, going west, is Coolidge, one thousand and 
thirty-eight miles from the Missouri. It is the second morning out, 
and we are still in New Mexico, though only thirty-eight miles from 
the eastern border of Arizona. 

Since leaving the Rio Grande, which we do when we turn west- 
ward at Albuquerque, it has been plains-country, with mountains in 
the distance on every side. The scene is very different in details 
from what we had yesterday. Though still mountains, the sensations 
are not the same. About this there is a peculiar vastness that makes 
one feel like a being infinitely small ; a speck in immensity. 

There is a glimpse that will interest you if you should pass the 
place in the day time, (which you do at least on the return trip). It 
is Laguna, sixty-six miles west of Albuquerque, a Pueblo town 
built after the most ancient fashion, and in that respect unlike Isleta. 
It is perched upon a sterile hill close beside the track, and is a com- 
pact cluster, in effect all one house, capable of holding eight hun. 
dred or one thousand people. It was at one time without any doors, 
the people climbing ladders to the roofs, and then taking the ladder 
up after them, descending again to the interior through a hole in the 
roof. In later times, however, a few openings have been made 
below. 

This curious town is terraced so that half the occupations of life 
may be carried on on the roof. It is a kind of human ant hill. It 
would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this Pueblo idea of 
architecture was a fashion merely. Living time immemorial sur- 
rounded by enemies ; Apaches, Navajoes, etc., all of them nomads 
and robbers by nature, the terraced house was a necessity. The 
Pueblos are farmers as totally unlike the North American Indian as 
possible. He can fight, and does upon occasion, or he would long 
since have become extinct. But he always had something eatable 



98 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 




and valuable to be robbed of, and he could not 

fold his tent and steal awa)^ The fight he has 

'^- made for hundreds of years, 

purely in self-defense, has 

been a most gallant one. 

As you pass Laguna (Lah- 
goo-\\dX\ ; a lake) there may 
not be a soul in sight. But 
there are occasionally some 
little black-eyed, cotton-clad 
urchins on the rocks. These 



A Great-great-granddaughter of Castile. 

people work some arable and 
watered land not far away, 
and the children are usually 
out in the plain, herding 
sheep. 

The Pueblo of Acoma 
(.<4^-o-mah) is about twelve 
miles from McCarty's sta- 
tion, twenty-seven miles west 
of Laguna. This curious 
place is a "City in the Sky." 
There is a wide canyon with 
precipitous sides only to be 
descended by zig-zag paths. 
Where this canyon widens 
out into a valley there is a 




A New Mexican Matron. 



NEW MEXICO. 



99 



mass of rock standing isolated, high and steep. There was until the 
last few years only one way of reachmg the top of this ; a perpen- 
dicular path with notches in it that would fit the toe of a moccason, 
and were worn to that exact shape. Up and down this path these 
Pueblos went daily for nobody knows how many years, and they do 
it yet. But they have now made a road on the opposite side, very 




A Pueblo, New Mexico, 

Steep and difficult, up which animals that are accustomed to it can 
go, one at a time. The city at the top is about three acres in extent. 
Down in the plain there are patches of cultivated ground, the farms 
of these sky-dwellers. 

Some distance up the valley beyond Acoma there is another high 
and inaccessible rock called La Mesa Encantada (Mtrvsa.h Encan- 
ia/i-dah) " The Haunted Hill." The true story of this place is a 



100 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

touching one, and there is a reason for the peculiar name. It was 
once the home of the people of Acoma, used as Acoma is now. 
One day the whole population of the town, men, women and 
children, with the exception of three ailing women, were in the 
valley below at work. It was harvest time, and they all worked 
together according to custom on such occasions. 

A cloud-burst, as the sudden floods of this country are called, 
occurred up the valley. A great wave came down the valley and 
undermined the sand upon which rested the narrow staircase of 
notched rock by which alone the top of the mesa was reached. 
When the people returned they found that where the stairs had been, 
the whole side of the mesa was gone, and had fallen in a heap in 
the valley below. The place was absolutely inaccessible. The 
three women could be seen above, wandering around the edges, 
waving their arms and shouting, but there was no help. The city 
is there, just as it was left so many years ago, and the skeletons of 
the three women lie somewhere undisturbed. Nobody has been upon 
the Mesa Encantada since the day of the flood. The people moved 
to Acoma and began again. 

Aside from anything Mr. Gushing has done in connection with 
the Zuiiis, just south of here, half the pages of this volume could 
readily be filled with sketches of this interesting people. A detailed 
account of every-day life at Acoma alone should be well worth 
perusal. There is, over the whole story of the Pueblos, a charm of 
hospitality, courage, industry and love of home. It is a story of 
ages of suffering and peril, of persecution and constancy. The 
little glimpses of their rocky homes the railroad traveller may get do 
not tell the story. The Pueblos are the remaining representatives of 
a past that has a history only to be partially known. Through all this 
history their men have been brave and their women virtuous. They 
now cling to their fastnesses from association and the love of home. 
They present the only instance of successful communism. They are, 
and have always been, absolutely independent of all mankind besides. 




RIZ0NA. 



INDLY remember as you pass by, 
that Arizona is about as large as 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Delaware and Maryland combined. We 
are not going to see it, the human vision 
being limited, here as elsewh'ere, to a few miles. The Atlantic and 
Pacific railroad is but two lines of steel and a right-of-way across 
this vast territory with land enough for an empire, and the puny 
effort of steam and steel is hardly noticeable to the soaring bird 
amid the surrounding immensity. 

We are in a region now compared to which all we have previously 
passed is comparatively far advanced in civilization. This is a land 
upon which the sunrise of the coming time is just breaking; a scene 
of wide pasture-lands, vast mountain-ranges filled with ores, lava- 
beds which seem to have scorched a fiery course through the valleys 
in comparatively modern times, arid wastes, rushing streams, pine 
-forests, awful gorges like that of the Grand Canyon, caves, petrified 

(131) 



102 • OVERLAND GUIDE. 

forests, rock-hewn cities perched between the ledges of the cliffs, 
and all brooded over by the monotony of a vastness and silence that 
makes the eyes ache and the senses tired. 

It is also the residence, time immemorial, of tribes and peoples- 
whose history is speculated upon, but really unknown, and whO' 
differed very widely from each other in language, life, disposition 
and occupation. The Pueblos are perched upon their hills, while: 
Navajoes and other wandering tribes, all enemies to these shepherds 
and farmers, still come down from their reservations to stare at the 
passing trains, wh'.le the Moquis, far aloof, seem to have nothing to- 
do with either their farming brethren or the savage tribes, and the 
white American, making his little ambitious towns in the heart of the 
desert, is the manifest heir of all. 

It is the land of mountains. Mexico alone can offer any compar- 
ison to it in this respect. Beginning almost at sea-level in the south- 
west, they rise higher and higher until m some cases they are lost in 
the clouds. They lie sometimes in ranges, but most frequently in 
groups and almost isolated peaks. Sometimes, as in the San Fran- 
cisco range, north of Flagstaff, they rise to a height of fourteen 
thousand feet. 

These mountains all seem to the eye to be brown and scorched; 
mere masses of rock so barren and so big as to be repellent from the 
standpoint of usefulness or profit. But in reality they are largely 
covered with grass and timber, and are watered by running streams- 
Looked at from the car-windows they are gigantic monuments to 
perpetual desolation. It is like looking at the full moon. It is plain 
enough, but you can't tell from looking what may be there. The 
canyons, at least, are not visible. They are often valleys many miles 
in length, completely shut in from the outer world, thick with pines, 
having running streams, and even cascades, and as silent as a land 
of ghosts. In some cases, and more in certain groups and ranges 
than in others, there is a climate, a flora, an atmosphere, that, as 
compared to all you see below, make another, an unsuspected, and 




Arizona Mountains. 



(103) 



104 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

delightful world. The Indians of the country have always lived in 
the mountains until the era of reservations came, and lived well. 
Looking down on the arid plateaux where all they hated was, they 
felt a sense of security. Nobody could follow them to their retreats. 
As a matter of fact no one ever has followed them thither. ^They 
were only in danger when caught before they could get home. 

There are in some of these mountains wide plains, lying at an ele- 
vation of five or six thousand feet, that are covered with fine grasses 
and crossed by unfailing streams. Out of these plains rise still other 
and higher peaks. In places the streams have cut deep gorges and 
canyons, and in others they have widened out into alluvial valleys. 

There will be times during to-day and to-morrow when you will 
know, as you look abroad, and with a personal and private certainty 
that you do not propose any guide-book, or the stories of any old 
settler, shall cheat you of, that this gigantic panorama of mountain 
and plain, blazing in white sunlight and uninhabited as the sea, is 
absolutely worthless for all the purposes of human occupancy. In 
all probability you will be mistaken. They are improving Arizona. 
It was improved once before, and knew a higher civilization than 
any of the eastern States did before the white man came. Here and 
there in various localities the old water-ways are visible amid rock 
and cactus and sage. There were hundreds of thousands of acres 
of fruitful land. It was never all so. Mountain ridges are not till- 
able in any country. The huge divides have been washed down to 
the bare rock by the storms of centuries. But this same washed 
soil, deposited in lower places, is the most fertile known. California 
is a lesson to the whole country on ways of procuring water, and 
places that have long been abandoned to the coyote and the sage- 
hen, and are all the more desolate now from having once been in- 
habited, will be used again for the purposes of civilization. There 
is reason for the conclusion that both New Mexico and Arizona are 
to be coming countries for the home-seeking class. The public lands 
are gone almost everywhere else. The achievements of these home- 



ARIZONA. 



105 



making people are such as to give assurance of success where success 
is possible. If there were no Apaches; absolutely none on reser- 
vations or elsewhere ; the advance-guard would already be in these 
mountains. Of late years the name of the country has been synony- 
mous with Indian outrage, rapine and torture. In no portion of 
the United States has there been a more persistent struggle against 
savagery. When some future historian shall have collected the facts, 
if one ever does, the tale will exceed all fiction. 
Isolation and Indians are two words that portray 
the history of Arizona almost up to date. 

The territory is, excepting the comparatively 
small area included in Southern California, the 

south - western 
corner of the 
United States. 
It contains 
114,000 square 
miles,or 72,906,- 
240 acres. This 
makes it as large 
in area as five 
or six ordinary 
States. 

The size of 

these enormous districts of almost unsettled, and entirely unde- 
veloped country, has much to do with the future of the great 
Republic. It is only by comparisons with the combined areas 
of other States that we know all about, that we can arrive at any 
fair conception of the enormous scope still left to the growing mil- 
lions of this nation before the time prophesied by Macaulay shall 
have arrived. 

The best parts of Arizona are not seen from any railroad as yet 
built. One half the area of the northern half is a plateau lying at 




An Arizona Valley. 



106 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



an elevation of 6,000 feet. The surface of this is diversified by 
occasional peaks and isolated ranges and is covered with fine grasses, 
and crossed by streams. There is through this portion of the ter- 
ritory a long line of extinct volcanoes, and lava-fields are scattered 
here and there. 

The south-western portion is mostly a succession of sandy plains; 
not deserts in any strict sense, since both the Yuma, or Colorado, 
and Mojave plains are covered in places with grass. Both these are 
considered and called " deserts " both by geographers 
and locally. They are divided one from the /m, r^y-,,u .Oia 
other by a range of mountains, being ^^ I P^W'!'/!'^ i' f v 

otherwise continous, and across the '^^->^'^:-^.'^!^'>'vkC/%^ ^^ I 
upper one, the " Mojave Desert," the 
Atlantic and Pacific road is laid. 

In Arizona the great record of the 
primeval world lies open, with the' 
story of the ages 



upon its pages. It 
was once a Paleo- 
zoic sea, on whose 
waters no ship ever 
sailed, on whose 
shores no man trod. 




y^'^^'i'. 






'1 I 



Water Worn Rocks. 

It is a land of revelations to the geologist. Nowhere can the past be 
traced more distinctly. There are everywhere the marks of water. 
Its erosions are on the cliffs and in t'he canyons. You can see them 
miles away, and close beside the track. Some of the grinding was 
done by the lapping waves of the ancient sea, some is the result of 
floods, oft repeated in later ages, and some of the fantastic carving 
was not done by either, but by nature's gigantic sandblast; the wan- 
dering winds of solitude, bearing with them the sharp sand gathered 
from the ground, have in the course of time cut the cliffs and " mon- 
uments" into those fantastic shapes, and the process is still going on. 



ARIZONA. 107 

The later history of Arizona is the same, in all essential features, 
with that. of New Mexico. Arizona remained part of that territory 
until as late as 1863. It was a portion of the " Gadsden purchase" 
of 1854. At the close of the Mexican war there were almost no 
white people here, and fifteen years ago the Apache was lord of all. 
The building of the railroad was almost the first dawn of the modern 
era. The Pueblos, almost destroyed by centuries of savage depre- 
dation, afforded the only glimpses of industrial life at its advent. It 
.seems almost an intrusion still. The palace-car is an anachronism. 
The sensations induced by the curious situation may not occur to 
everyone; they are dulled by use. But, when darkness and silence 
have shut in the scene, one lies in his bed and listens to the ring of 
the wheel upon the rail, and knows that the headlight flashes across 
the waste, that the whistle awakes echoes silent always until now, 
and wonders at the boldness that has caused so incongruous a thing 
as a railroad train to dash across these uninhabited silences. In old 
times they did not make missionaries of wrought iron and polished 
brass. The world has changed. 

Taking up the thread of travel again, we pass, ten miles west of 
Coolidge, the little station called Wingate. Three miles south of 
this, and distinct in the sunshine, is the military post of Fort Win- 
gate. It looks a pleasant place, and presents at least one isolated 
:spot where all the refinements of eastern civilization may be found. 
Close beside it stands the curious, cathedral-shaped rock known as 
" Navajo Church." Sometimes the books of travel have in all seri- 
ousness spoken of this as an actual ruin. It is simply a huge rock 
that, in the vernacular of the region, " got left " in some convulsion 
or erosion that tore down the remainder of the ledge. 

About forty miles from Wingate is Zuiii {Zoon-ye) the Pueblo 
town and tribe so extensively advei-tised by Mr. Cushing. So ex- 
tensively has this already been done, that it is not worth while to 
-linger upon the subject here. 

Gallup sfation is a place of coal. But the character of the 



ARIZONA. 109' 

deposit changes here, and this is a lignite, or brown coal, of a not 
extraordinarily good quality. 

For a long distance here we traverse the valley of the Rio Puerco 
{J?ce-oh F'roerco). You may not be able to discover this fact by 
simply looking at it, for nothing looking much like a river is visible. 
But there is an indefinitely defined valley, arable land, and water 
somewhere. The \n or 6. puerco means filthy, dirty, foul. It is one of 
the strong terms of the Spanish. It also commonly designates a 
pig, and is akin to our work " pork.' Twining and bending endlessly 
through New Mexico, this Puerco River is a very long one, though 
you can with difificulty see it. It has been a source of life to many 
generations of Pueblos, and its valley has always been a centre of 
population. 

The curious and hideous heaps of black rock you have observed 
by the roadside are pure lava. Except to crack in cooling, most 
of it that is visible lies where it was originally deposited. It 
seems to have been a comparatively recent flow, but in reality it is. 
not. Nothing in Arizona looked as it does now when this red-hot 
stream flowed down the valley. Nine-tenths of it is long since cov- 
ered up. It is only that some of it is exposed here that it seems pecul- 
iarly a volcanic country in this immediate neighborhood. If you 
climb to the summit of San Francisco Mountain, you can look down 
into the parched throats of a hundred craters. 

Immediately north of the station of Gallup, and some fifty miles, 
distant, is the enormous reservation of the Navajoe Indians [Nav- 
ah-hoe). These often come down to some one of the various sta- 
tions south of them', and display their only interest in civilization by 
looking at the trains. There is no telling what they think of the in- 
novation. They can speak Spanish a little if they wish, but are in- 
variably entirely non-committal as to all personal opinions. The 
Pueblos often come also. There are certain signs by which the 
stranger can readily tell the difference between them. The PueblO' 
woman has always her hair banged. They started the bang several 



ARIZONA. 



Ill 



hundreds or thousands of years ago, and it gives their faces a stupid 
look. They also wear thick casings of buckskin upon their legs, giv- 
ing these from the knee down the thickness of ordinary fence-posts. 
When we reach the open plain near what is called the Continental 
Divide, we shall see on the north side of the track some of the curious 
work of the water. For several miles there is a line of red and gray- 
palisades. Sometimes the face is marked by a long and narrow 




Isolated Rocks; Casa Grande. 

Streak of white. Sometimes there is a coping of green, and here and 
there an isolated mass stands out in the plain. This is a case where 
a portion of the mass " got left," again. It is evident that the plain 
was once covered clear across by these strata. 

HoLBROOK is an eating station, and sixty miles west of there what 
is called in not very choice Spanish Canyon Diablo (De-a//-blo) 
is passed. The name means " Devil Canyon," and the place is 



ARIZONA. 113 

Simply a hideous gash in the face of nature 540 feet wide and* 222 feet 
deep, and running for miles across the plain. The edges are level 
with the surface of the country, and at a little distance it cannot be 
seen at all. If it were closed up the projections on one edge would 
fit with tolerable accuracy the notches on the other. It was caused 
simply by a contraction and cracking of the surface of the earth in 
cooling. So, on a much grander scale, was the Grand Canyon off 
the Colorado. 

From this point San Francisco Mountain can be distinctly seen, 
being the easternmost one of the group composed of Kendrick's 
Peak, Challender Peak, Mt. Sitgreaves, and furthest to the west, 
Antelope Peak. These form the San Francisco Mountains, shading 
off into the plateau with numerous smaller elevations. 

And here the country begins to change into something the trav- 
eller does not expect. It becomes, and continues for many miles, a 
beautiful pine forest. The ground is covered with a thick growth 
of grass. There is to the eye scarcely a more attractive country in 
all the West. 

Flagstaff is a brisk little town with an eccentric name, and is a 
lumber capital. They are cutting out the yellow pine as fast as pos- 
sible, not for the sake of clearing the land, but for lumber. As for 
the soil, it is not as good as that of some of the most unprepossessing 
of the country we have been riding through all day. No means has 
thus far been devised of obtaining water. There are few streams, 
and all that lies beneath seems to be volcanic rock of the hardest 
variety. It is a country of great natural beauty, lying some seven 
thousand feet above sea-level, and a health resort, but agriculturally, 
or even for very extensive grazing, nearly, or entirely, worthless. 

Eight miles south-east f romFlagstaff,and across a beautiful timbered 
park, lie the famous cliff-dwellings. There is an enormous canyon, 
the walls of which are composed of rough sandstone. It is in these 
walls that the dwellings are found. They occupy a space in both 
sides of the canyon where a soft layer lies between two harder ones, 



114 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

making, from crumbling and falling out, or being easily displaced, a 
niche or space. A rough wall laid in clay, and extending from the 
front of the lower to the upper ledge, formed the fronts of the dwell- 
ings. These rooms are extensive enough to have sheltered an ex- 
tensive population, and, being situated about half-way up the wall, 
were, while not inaccessible, easily defended. The remains found in 
the long-ago-abandoned dwellings are of such articles as arc now 
in common use among the Pueblos. The only difference seems to 
consist in the fact that wooden articles found have been cut with a 
stone axe. This means only antiquity. But the articles unearthed 
from the works of the Mound-Builders east of the Mississippi are 
also such as the Pueblos use, and the similarity extends to small de- 
tails. There are those who are firm in the belief that all one may 
see at Ysleta, or Tesuque, or Laguna, or Acoma, or here in the sides 
of the canyon-walls, has a direct connection with the curious tumuli 
that have puzzled the antiquarians ever since they were discovered. 
This Pueblo, Aztec, Toltec, Mound-Builder, or whatever he may be, 
is the most interesting and sorrowful human enigma now known. 
The remains and traditions of departed greatness hang about him 
unexplained. There is a peculiar pathos about an expiring race. 
There is something far more pathetic than entertaining in these de- 
serted cliff-dwellings, perched between heaven and earth in a lonely 
canyon, old and futile refuges against the rapine that finally almost 
destroyed the race. 

In the immediate vicinity of these cliff-dwellings, but out in the 
plain, there are other remains of a city. Remains of pottery and 
domestic utensils offer convincing evidence that the same people 
occupied both places. 

About eight miles north-east of Flagstaff, a small and isolated 
mountain stands in the plain. On the south front the volcanic rock 
is full of cavities, round in form, that are actually the blow-holes of 
a gigantic piece of slag. Some of these globular cavities are 
twenty-five feet in diameter. All of these were a long time 



ARIZONA. 



115 



inhabited. They were reached by steps, and sometimes were 
walled in front. 

The " Petrified Forest " lies a few miles from the station of 




The Cliff Dwellings, Arizona. 



HoLBRooK. It lies over an extent of several miles. The trees 
are many of them of large size, and their varieties have not been 



116 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

definitely decided upon. One of the flinty trunks is ten feet in 
diameter. Limbs and branches, petrified into solid rock, lie scattered 
in all directions. Every color found in nature is reproduced in this 
agatized wood, and it has become an article of trade in the form of 
jewelry. 

There is a natural bridge in Arizona, in comparison with which 
that of Virginia becomes hardly >vorth mentioning. It is not acces- 
sible from the railroad, and is merely mentioned as one of the freaks 
this strange country is capable of. It lies in what is called the 
Tonto Basin, in the south-eastern part of the enormous county of 
Yavapai (Yava-//-ee), itself containing something near thirty thousand 
square miles. (Massachusetts contains only seven thousand eight 
hundred, and the State of Maine is only a little bigger than Yavapai 
having an area of about thirty-five thousand square miles.) 

A man may stand on the crown of this bridge and not know it, 
for there are about sixty acres of it, and some of this is cultivated 
ground. It has a span of eighty feet, and its width is a hundred and 
fifty yards. There is a round hole in the middle of the arch through 
which one can look at the stream below. The gigantic limestone 
walls spring in perfect curves to the perfect arch above. 

A weird and uncanny region must be what is called " The Painted 
Desert." It is a wild and desolate plateau, also in Yavapai County, 
but in the north-eastern part. It is absolutely destitute of water or 
vegetation, and its surface is covered with columns, isolated peaks, 
and buttes, all sandstone, and worn into fantastic shapes by the 
wind; — the sand-blast. The peculiarity of this desert consists in its 
wonderful mirages. There are depicted there palaces, gardens, 
colonnades, temples, fountains, lakes, islands, fortifications, woods, 
groves, orchards, men and women, herds of cattle, etc. The 
Indians are superstitious about it, and have always carefully 
avoided it. 

This mirage sometimes plays fantastic pranks with the ordinary 
senses of the traveller in other parts of Arizona and New Mexico. 



ARIZONA. 



117 



A beautiful lake, with islands, a port and town, sailboats, and trees 
on the shore, may occur at any moment beside the track. The 




illusion is perfect, except that it is too pretty for the actual thing. 
The mirage has a most prosaic explanation too. It is nothing but 



118 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



waves of rarified air rising from the heated ground. Any one who> 
looks across the top of a heated cooking-range through an operk 

window can at any time 
have a modified and 
imperfect mirage for 
himself. 

Perhaps the b e s t 
country in Arizona is 
that nursery of thieves,, 
the San Carlos Indian 
Reservation. It is on 
the San Carlos River 
that so many remains 
of an ancient civiliza- 
tion are found. The 
ruined irrigating chan- 
nels and dwellings that 
line its banks show that 
a large population once 
lived here. 

The Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado may 
be reached most agree- 
ably from the town 
of Flagstaff, though 
the distance is much 
greater than from 
Peach Springs, which 
is the nearest station 
on the A. & P. road to 
the great southward bend the gorge makes on the western border 
of the Territory. The ride from Peach Springs is only some 
twenty miles, but it is a rough road even for Arizona. From 




ARIZONA. 119' 

Flagstaff it is some sixty-five miles, but it is a most enjoyable Sum- 
mer trip through heavy pine country, over a fairly good road, 
and in a grass country. It means camping and some hardship, in 
any event, and should not be undertaken by invalids, or by ladies 
who are not accustomed to roughing it. A railroad from Flagstaff 
has been for some time contemplated, and when built will offer facili- 
ties for visiting a piece of scenery that has no rival in the world, and 
that is worth the journey hither many times over. 

There is no intention here of attempting to describe the Grand 
Canyon. Such efforts, thus far, have been invariably thrown away. 
A friend of the author once told him the following story, which is 
only repeated here to illustrate the uselessness of talking about a 
place which is far beyond any descriptive power, and which, as a 
noticeable fact, no one talks much about after seeing it. 

These two gentlemen were Englishmen. When they had alighted 
from the wagon and gone to the edge of the canyon, they for awhile 
stood silent. Then one of them ejaculated "'Well, — I'll bed — d!" 
The other had meantime seated himself upon a convenient boulder, 
and was weeping like a broken-hearted girl. The scene that affects 
men's nerves like this, and causes them to utter inane ejaculations or 
weep, it is useless to dwell upon in types. 

But, at least, let no one imagine that the Grand Canyon is "pretty." 
That it is awful there can be no question, and it makes an impression 
that is never recovered from. No one has ever seen it all, except 
possibly Major Powell. When you have exhausted all the time at 
your disposal, you must remember that there are still hundreds of 
miles of it to be seen, for the chasm is four hundred miles in length. 
Canyon is not a fit name for it, as its heights and depths must be 
measured, not in feet, or by ordinary standards, but by miles. As 
you look down from the top the chasm is a measureless abyss. As 
you look upward from the bottom the awful walls overwhelm you. 
The river that has its channel between is not a puny stream, for the 
Colorado is more than 1,500 miles in length, and the area drained 



120 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



by it is larger than the States of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and all New 
England combined. There are no actual falls in the Grand Canyon, 
and if there were they would be the mightiest of the world; but 




where the Canyon narrows the mighty stream rages through its 
narrow gateways with terrific force. Floods raise it sometimes 
seventy feet in a few hours. 

All the Canyon, and all the world around it, is rock. It is unin- 



ARISONA. 131 

liabited save by a few Indians, and uninhabitable. Domes, cliffs, 
fantastic monuments, sheer walls, cracks appear everywhere. The 
half of it is not known; nine-tenths of it has never been seen by white 
men. It impresses all. No man is so dull as to escape its fascina- 
tion. A frontiersman of the old times told the author twenty years 
ago that he had travelled and lurked three days amongst the hostile 
Indians of those times to get a view of it, and that he went again 
and again, though as he expressed it, " I had to crawl on my belly 
to git thar." 

Geologically, the Grand Canyon is a crack, and has been there 
since the world cooled. The river did not wear the channel there, 
but simply flowed into and through it when the time for rivers 
came. 

Some time the place will be better known ; this upon the sup- 
position that it is possible to know a place of such proportions, 
where all ordinary chasms and gorges would be lost and never even 
observed. The chasm below the falls at Niagara might be swallowed 
up in a side-canyon here, and its existence never be suspected. 

Beyond Flagstaff the road lies in the heart of characteristic 
mountain scenery. Beyond the station of Williams the descent to 
the valley of the Colorado is rapid. If it is daylight, the difificulties 
that were overcome in the construction of the road are very apparent. 
But, however they may have seemed to the engineers, they are 
very pleasant to the traveller. They convey the impression that 
the Atlantic & Pacific road was built in the only place possible, and 
looking back causes a mental question as to how this one route was 
ever found. There are not many landmarks except to some accom- 
plished mountaineer. It is all pine and rock and chasm. But Bill 
Williams's Peak looks blue above the rest on the left. The inquiry 
naturally is as to the history of a man who has a mountain named 
for him. He seems to have been a pioneer of strong character who 
impressed himself upon his local surroundings, and more than this 
of him seems dimly traditional. 



122 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 




Prescott Junc- 
tion, a station near 
the western end of 
Picacho Canyon, and 
some fifty miles from 
tlie dining-station of 
Williams, is the junc- 
tion-point for Pres- 
cott, the capital city 
of the Territory, by 
way of the Prescott 
& Arizona Central 
Railroad. 

It is one thousand 
four hundred and 
seventy-six miles from 
the Missouri River to 
the western boundary 
line of Arizona, and 
the Colorado River. 
As the train glides 
downward toward this- 
unpicturesque and 
useless river, dash- 
ing its ashen waves 
against the piles of 
the long bridge, the 
surroundings have 
grown curiously un- 
attractive. Scurrying 
through the willow- 
clumps, or rubbing 
sleepy eyes at the 



ARIZONA. 



123 



door of the wickiup, you miy catch glimpses of ahnost naked 
Indians. You will see them again, to the entire satisfaction of any 
reasonable curiosity, when the train has crossed the bridge. 

The Needles takes its curious name from some sharp peaks on the 
Arizona side and some fifteen miles away at the northern end of what 
is called the Mojave (Mo-Zm/i-ve) Range. They stand on the left 
before reaching the river. The town is celebrated for a climate of 
almost unvarying torridness, for its surroundings of sandy and lava- 
strewn desolation, and its convenience as a loafing place for the 




Indians of the region. Otherwise it is a railroad town entirely, a 
changing-place for engines, etc. As a dining-station it has attrac- 
tions. The only ice ever seen here appears on the table, and the 
profusion of luscious fruits proclaims our nearness, at last, to the 
vineyards and orchards of Southern California. 

The Colorado reminds one of the Missouri, except that the current 
is very ifiuch less sluggish. Its peculiar color is obtained after it 
leaves the Canyon, and there its waters are amber-color, or white. 
Next to the Columbia the Colorado is the principal tributary to the 
Pacific on the continent. It was first discovered by one Fernando 



124 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



Alarcon, May 9th, 1540. He ascended it in boats as far as the 
Grand Canyon, and is probably one of the few people who ever did, 
for it is one of the most unnavigable and capricious streams on the 
continent. Where it ran last year is this year a fertile bottom over- 
grown with swamp-grass, tall weeds, and willow-clumps. 




One of the Wild Ones. 



The Indians you see at The Needles are Mojaves. There'are only 
some eight hundred of them altogether, but there are about two 
hundred more known as Chim-e-hu-vis, who live with them. The 
Mojaves are, as to stature and proportion, not bad-looking; — for 



ARIZONA. 



12& 



Indians. They were once a fighting people, and gave a good deal of 
trouble until 1859, when a certain Colonel Hoffman, of the regular 
service, gave them so crushing a 
defeat that they have been ever 
since about as you see them now. 
Morally they are considered to 
be very low in the scale. Contact 
with the whites has brought dis- 
ease, idleness, whiskey, loaferism 
and beggary. They are now an in- 
significant band of tatterdema- 
lions, amusing and disgusting 
alike to overland passengers at 
The Needles. Studied at close 
quarters the best specimens of 
the Noble Red Man lack a good 
deal of filling the ideal of old- 
fashioned poetry and Cooper's 
novels. They are all rancid. 
These Mojaves are neither the 
best nor the worst. 

There arc two or three of them, 
ordinary habitues of this little 
town whom you will not find it 
difficult to carry away with you in 
your mind. One of them is the 
belle. She wears a hoop-skirt 
under a calico petticoat, and a 
gorgeous mantle made of cotton 
handkerchiefs that have not been 
cut apart. Bare-legged, bare- 
footed, bare-bodied and bare-headed, the" remainder of her attire 
is not worth mentioning. 




Arizona Belle. 



136 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



Another is the Old Squaw. You cannot imagine until you see 
lier, what texture the human skin may take when uncovered for half 
or three-quarters of a century. It is simply living leather, and hang- 
ing in tough wrinkles and folds, is a modification only of the hide of 
a rhinoceros. Her breasts hang down to her waist, callous like the 

rest. Her feet and 
legs are indifferent 
to thorns. Heavy 
gray hair covers her 
head and hangs in 
uncombed masses. 
She is a hardened 
and brazen old 
creature, strong and 
straight, unabashed 
by the presence of 
strangers; an epi- 
tome and abridge- 
ment of all one has 
ever heard or read 
of of the chiefest 
barbarian of them 
all; — The Squaw. 

The Yuma tribe, 
just below, seem akin 
to these. They also 
were once strong and 
warlike, but since 
185 1 have been peaceful on account of having had a chastisement at 
the hands of one Colonel Heintzelman. The old Fort, historic as the 
place the dead soldier came back to from hades after his blankets, 
and built to hold in check this once powerful tribe, is now occupied 
by the Indians themselves. Like the Mojaves they are passing away. 




An Old Settler 



iALIF0RNIA. 



fiHE crossing of the Colorado, at The Needles, is very nearly at 
the junction point of Arizona, Nevada and California. The 
town is in the huge county of San Bernardino, and the track lies 
in this county almost to Los Angeles, about three hundred miles. 

It is a very 
unprepossess- 
ing entrance 
intotheGolden 
vState, for here 
begins a semi- 
desert consid- 
erably more 
barren than 
anything thus 
far encounter- 
ed on the jour- 
ney. By a 
peculiar dis- 
pensation of 

Providence each transcontinental line 
crosses one of these, some better, 
some worse. This is reputed easiest 
of all. Going to Southern California 
first, and making the journey by way of Los Angeles, 
there is one hundred and seventy miles of it from 
The Needles to Barstow, where the train turns- 
southward through the Cajon {(Z^]\-hone; a box,) pass into the San 
Gabriel Valley. 

In midsummer this half-day's ride, or more, is very warm. But it is 
® (127) 




128 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

not necessary to believe that clouds of sand will drift with the wind, 
or that the heat has any stifling qualities. Many an eastern journey 
has both more heat and more dust in it. Many who are unused to 
such scenes find an enjoyment in it through contrast with all the 
journeys ever made before. This is something like what may be 
expected : — 

There is rock, cactus, volcanic scoriae, sage-brush, eternal sunshine 
and absolute silence. Save where at long distances apart some little 
sign of water has made a cluster of human habitations, there seems 
to be no inhabitant of earth or air. The thickest of the stunted 
herbage is called " sage," and seeming to be always dead and never 
green, it grows upon a soil that is not soil at all, but a species of 
concrete. What grass there is grows in bunches. The region 
oppresses, while it interests you. Vast masses of mountain lie all 
around, hazy-blue with distance. Gaunt cacti sway and nod in the 
idle wind. Forests of the curious yucca palm appear at intervals, 
some day to be all cut down and taken away for the manufacture of 
paper. There may be rarely a gray coyote, looking behind him, 
and seeming to smile when he lolls his red tongue. Occasionally a 
jackass rabbit lays his long ears down, and makes a gray streak of 
himself as he departs for some locality where there are fewer myste- 
rious rumblings and less smoke. The effects of the sunshine are 
something like those of the electric light; the lights are intensely 
brilliant and the shadows black. The scene is not wanting in a 
weird and mysterious charm. Silence, loneliness and vastness, have 
the effect of entertaining and pleasing, where there is no danger 
and little discomfort, and where by simply sitting still the panorama 
will unwind itself and pass away. This lacks only yellow sand and 
a string of laden camels, instead of ice-water and the luxurious 
interior of a Pullman car, to give one all that sense of solitude, that 
feeling of the danger of being lost, that utter isolation, the pilgrim to 
Mecca must have as he crosses the wastes of the Sahara. 

Sometimes, far ahead, a brown dot in the landscape indicates a 



CALIFORNIA. 



129 



Station-house. One of them, for some unknown reason, is called 
Bagdad. Another is called Siberia, possibly because it is the hottest 
place on the road. But Ash Hill was named in good faith. 

It is deemed not improbable that water can be procured here by 
boring wells, and people who have had their lessons about deserts 
are looking forward to the time when at least a portion of this may 



The Dessrt. 

be made not only inhabitable, but 
very fruitful. Climate is the chief 
inducement to these speculations. 
Yet, except in nooks and corners, 
it is not free from frost. 

Barstow, the junction-point 
for Southern California direct, 
forms the terminus of our west- 
ward journey. The place is one 
thousand six hundred and forty-five miles from the Missouri, Here 
the cars destined for Los Angeles and San Diego turn directly south- 
ward. It is the end of the desert. By a contrast and transition so 
striking as to be almost marvelous, you stand at this lonely little 



{(/■■ 



'. /i>''' 



130 OVERLAxND GUIDE. 

desert station almost upon the verge of a country where all the 
products of two zones grow side by side, with a luxuriance unknown 
elsewhere on the globe, and beneath a climate that within the past 
five years has attracted tens of thousands of permanent residents. 

If in Winter you go south into Southern California from the main 
line of the Atlantic & Pacific at Barstow, you will find the north- 
ern side of the San Bernardino Range to be frosty. The beautiful 
mountain scenery of that range, fliough green with grass, pines, and 
the variety of California shrubs, ma}'^ be flecked with snow. 

The moment one has emerged from Cajon Pass on the southern 
side, however, the scene changes, and one enters the now famous cli- 
mate of Southern California. 

The situation is peculiar. Climates are not ordinarily capable of 
being fenced. This is. The San Bernardino Range runs almost 
east and west, with a trend toward the south-east. It is the barrier 
which fences off all that may be found inhospitable, in a climatic 
sense, to the north of it. 

All the railroads from the East, previous to the construction of the 
California Southern and Central lines of the Santa Fe system, were 
built with especial reference to that portion of California that for 
thirty years or more had been the only portion of the State in which 
any interest was felt. Up to within about a dozen years ago, Cali- 
fornia meant that part which lay above the thirty-sixth meridian. 
The southern portion of the State was considered, and indeed was, 
a desert. In all the wonderful history of early California after it 
came into the hands of the Americans it had no part. Yet it is very 
old in the fact that it was the first locality upon American soil to 
be occupied by the civilization of Europe. It has a story of its own, 
and a curious one, apart from that story of California which began 
in 1846. 

The San Bernardino Mountains are but an extension of the Sierra 
Madre Range, and the name is applied for local convenience. It is 
the spur that cuts off the Mojave rrom the so-called Colorado or ^ 



CALIFORNIA. 



131 



Yuma desert. Siera Madre means in the Spanish, " Mother Range." 
The term "Sierra" (Se-«'/;--rah ; — a saw; — toothed), should only be 
applied to a succession of sharp peaks. Mr. T. S. Van Dyke, in his 
" Southern California" says of these : — 




A Rift in the Sierras. 

"Few parts of the United States are less known and less traversed than these 
great hills ; yet they look down upon the very garden of California. Away up 
there the mountain trout flashes undisturbed in the hissing brook, and the call of 
the mountain quail rinjs froni the shady glen where the grizzly bear yet dozes 
away the day, secure as in the olden time. From the bristling points where the 



132 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

lilac and manzinita light up the dark hue of the surrounding chaparral, the deer yet 
looks down upon the plain from which the antelops has long been driven; while 
on the lofty ridges that lie in such clear outline against the distant sky the mountain 
sheep still lingers, safe in its inaccessible home." 

This range then, is the cause of the distinctive designation 
"Southern Cahfornia." Practically it is treated separately by all 
travellers, and its commercial and industrial destiny seems to be also 
different. It will, at the proper time, be considered separately in 
these pages. 

California, next after Texas, is the largest State of the Union. 
Departing from the usual squareness of the Western States, it has a 
curious, broken-backed configuration, being in extreme length 770 
miles, in breadth 330 miles at its widest part, and at its narrowest 
not more than 150 miles. Its area is about 188,981 square miles, or 
120,947,840 acres. The coast-line is bow-shaped, much indented 
with long curves and few bays, and is more than seven hundred , 
miles in length. The State, by way of comparison, may be stated to 
be one-and-one-half times larger than Great Britain and Ireland, 
which contain a population of 32,000,000. 

California is a inountain State, and it is estimated that 89,000,000 
acres are suited to some variety of profitable husbandry. It is the 
only State that may be said to embrace within its boundaries every 
known variety of climate. Mexico has largely this quality, with a 
wider area and greater general elevations and depressions. The 
practical facility with which this climatic variety can be used is an 
especial Californian feature. Until the southern part of the State 
became known it was not conceived possible that any country could 
be tropical without being in the tropics, and could have every known 
charm, product and advantage, without a single one of the perils 
or disadvantages of equatorial regions. Indeed the whole State is 
believed by its oldest inhabitants to be a country of contradictions 
and curiosities, which must all be learned before its advantages can 
be successfully used. 



CALIFORNIA. 



133 



The topography is peculiar. It is, generally speaking, mountain 
and valley, but these take unique forms. The reader is requested 
to imagine California as lying on the Atlantic instead of the Pacific 
coast, east and west being reversed for the purpose. He vi^ould find 
it to include the whole shore-line from about Boston to Charleston, 
with all the area included in ten of the thirteen original States. 




There are two great mountain ranges which, aside from the smaller 
ranges and spurs, are its chief topographical features. One of these 
is the Sierra Nevada {Se-air-rsih Neh-z'^^-ah; — snowy, or snowed,) 
Range, and the other the Coast Range. The first has an altitude of 
from eight to fifteen thousand feet, fencing all the eastern border. 
The Coast Range is more like the mountains we are accustomed to, 



134 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



having a height of from two thousand five hundred to four thousand 
feet. These hills do not count for much after what the traveller has 
been accustomed to, and would pass almost unnoticed but for the 
fact that, in connection with the Sierras, they fence in one of the re- 
markable valleys of the world. 

A rough diagram of California would show a very much elongated 
and very narrow basin, lying North and South nearly, and coming- 
together at each end with an almost V-shaped point. The northern 
junction-point is marked by Mount Shasta, a volcanic peak bare and 
cold, rising to an elevation of nearly fifteen thousand feet. At the 




southern junction of the two ranges stands San Bernardino Mount- 
ain, twelve thousand feet high. To an inhabitant of the moon this 
conformation may rudely seem like the braided chevron on a lady's 
sleeve, with a gigantic button at. each end. 

The canoe-shaped valley, wnth its serrated edges, is studded here 
and there with single mountains, groups, or spurs, and crossed by 
lower ranges. The cause of the peculiar climate of Southern Cali- 
fornia, considered with reference to this mountain system is, that the 
coast range divides, or forks, about the north-western corner of Los 
Angeles County, and while the main, but lower, range holds south- 



CALIFORNIA. 



135 



"vvard down the coast, that which is locally known as the San Bernar- 
dino Range, or the Sierra Madre more generally, turns sharply south- 




eastward, almost eastward, and becomes the climatic barrier before 
referred to. Between the Coast Range and the San Bernardinos, 
crowded up into the notch, lies the San Bernardino Valley; a pocket 



136 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

as compared to the area of the State, or even as compared to the 
whole area of that which is distinctively known as Southern California. 

But the real valley of the State; — that which as to its northern 
half is known as the Sacramento Valley, and as to its southern half 
as the San Joaquin (H'wah-ITeen); — comprises what a few years 
ago was meant by the word California. Usually, a river which trav- 
erses a valley flows into it at the upper end and out of it at the 
lower. Here it is not so. The two rivers, Sacramento and San Joa- 
quin, flow, one southward and the other northward, practically run 
together half way, and then turn westward and empty into the Bay 
of San Francisco. It is a case of geographical eccentricity of which 
California only seems fully capable. 

These two valleys were fur a long time famous alone. They 
were the agricultural and fruit-producing California of which so 
much was said and written. Lateral valleys, nooks, corners and 
pockets, shared the general reputation. They were famous, and 
deservedly, quite to the exclusion of that arid southern quarter 
which was perhaps good enough for the Spaniards, but supposed to 
be good for nobody else. Enclosed between their mountain walls, 
once, doubtless, an inland sea, they constitute an immense and fer- 
tile area which, in its turn, was not appreciated by the Spaniard, but 
in which the Saxon has grown rich. 

The Sacramento Valley is forty miles wide. It becomes mountain- 
ous in the northern part, but contains at least five million acres of 
fertile land, much of which does not need irrigation. The average 
annual rain-fall is about twenty inches. 

And it is an error to suppose that the climatic peculiarities that 
have made the southern quarter of the State so famous are en- 
tirely confined to that region. All of California constitutes a 
climatic curiosity as compared to the East, but Southern California 
is unique as compared to the world; — that is the difference. 

In the very northern counties of the State snow rarely lies on the 
ground more than one day. Domestic animals live out of doors the 



CALIFORNIA. 



isr 



year round. There is frost, but plants that die entirely every Winter 
in the East, spring again from the roots here in the early Spring. 
The tenderest varieties of foreign grapes grow. 

Until lately the Sacramento Valley was the most thickly populated 
portion of the State. It was unusually attractive; a great level over 




California Live Oak. 

which as far as one can see are scattered groves of live-oaks, which 
make the country resemble a great park. The foot-hills on its eastern 
side were the scenes of the earliest gold-digging, and a population 
which went for dust remained to farm. The Sacramento River is. 
navigable for some distance, and the valley had a railroad some years. 



138 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

earlier than any other portion of the interior. There, between" Sacra- 
mento and Marysville, lay Sutter's old fort, and around this, and 
filling all northern California, lay the romance of the gold-digging 
days; — a romance that appears one of the most attractive in our an- 
nals to every entirely disinterested person, but which seems not to 
affect the active participators in it. 

About Stockton is supposed to begin the southern extension of 
this valley; the San Joaquin. This end of it has an area of some 
seven million acres, and stretches from Stockton southward some 
three hundred miles. It has, not including the foot-hills, an average 
width of forty miles. These foot-hills are among the best portions 
of the valley in certain respects. There are, altogether, about eight- 
een million acres of good land, ten millions of which are considered 
susceptible of high tillage. 

Both these valleys, considered together as the great California Val- 
ley, have an area, including the lower hills on each side, of about 
sixteen thousand square miles. The greater part of it con- 
sists of soil washed down from the mountains on either side. It is 
alleged that it is the richest large body of land in the United States. 
That statement must now, however, be considerably softened and 
modified by the immensely rich and wide pieces of "desert" that 
have been taken in during the past ten years, one patch of which, in 
1884, produced nearly fifty million bushels of wheat. With the State 
of Kansas, wind-swept and blizzard-haunted as she is, staring one 
in the face, so to speak, it is difficult to prove that California, or any 
other State, contains "the richest large body of land in the world." 

But time was, since the American occupancy, when this valley was 
considered "good for nothing but grazing." The cattle-kings had 
their day here too, and stubbornly resisted the first feeble encroach- 
ments of agriculture. 

In this great valley was tried the first experiment, by the Saxon, 
on any considerable scale, in irrigation. It was a great and remark- 
able success that has since turned not only the region where first 



CALIFORNIA. 



139 



tried, but also the forsaken sands of Southern California, into a vast 
garden. In the past fifteen years thousands of English-speaking 
people have become permanently prosperous and independent by 
the practice of an agricultural art that, twenty-five years ago, was 
considered a Mexican and Pueblo makeshift, which it was scarcely 
likely any but renegade Americans would ever adopt. 




An Unoccupied Corner. 

In all California, northern and Southern alike, the winter is the 
summer-time of the year. This question of Climate is a very prom- 
inent one, and is often alleged to be the principal factor in all the 
charms of the country. " Ninety-five per cent, climate," is a very 
common allegation. Many people have been willing to accept that 
fact, if true, and to candidly acknowledge the potency of a charm 
the Spaniards perfectly understood two centuries ago, and which. 



140 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

they themselves have only recently discovered. The idea of a 
reversal of the seasons is not perhaps pleasant to the thorough- 
going Northerner. The curious thing about it is that it is not a re- 
versal. There are two or three facts that ought perhaps to be better 
understood. 

First : — Mildness of temperature, blooming flowers, or the plant- 
ing of ordinary Spring crops in September or November does not 
mean that there must be cold and frost at the opposite season. 

Second : — It 'does not mean that, being warm in Winter, it must 
be proportionately and unendurably hot in Summer. 

It is, especially in Southern California, largely an anomalous case, 
and the facts are these : 

The rains : — there being a distinct rainy season, — begin the last 
of September or during the first half of October. Ploughing 
begins about the first of November, and often la*er, and wheat, 
barley, oats, etc., are sown as soon as the ground can be made 
ready, but often not before February. The California farmer has 
about four months in which to prepare his land for seeding. 

Corn, where it is raised at all, is planted from March to May, and 
need not be gathered at any particular time. 

The harvest season for small grains is in the last part of May or 
the first part of June. 

The rains having ceased in April, the harvest season is always dry. 
The grain is threshed and put into bags, and left in the fields, and 
may lie there at the convenience of the owner. Califorr.ia grain 
does not "sweat." Potatoes are often left in the ground long 
after they are matured. 

Sometimes there are two crops raised on the same ground in one 
year; — wheat or barley for the first, and corn for the second. Wheat 
and barley are often sown for hay, and cut before the heads fill. 
But a couple of acres of beets, replanted as they are used, will keep 
three or four milk-kine the year through. Sheep are never fed at all. 
Horses not at work get nothing except what they " rustle for " at 



CALIFORNIA. 



141 




142 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



any season. Alfalfa sometimes yields as much as fifteen tons per 
acre in a single season, in from six to nine cuttings. Horses are 
much more easily kept in condition than elsewhere. California is 
rapidly becoming the blooded-horse country of the continent. The 
business of raising cattle was, for many long years, — say a century 
and a quarter, — the only business followed in California. 

It therefore follows that the genuine, old-fashioned Michigan, or 
New York, or Kansas, or Iowa Winter is absolutely done away with 
and unknown in all parts of the State. The remarks above are 
especially intended to apply to that part now generally known as 
northern California. So far as that part is concerned, it is true, in 
addition, that there are frosts except in places especially sheltered; 
there are cold winds. The farther north one goes the colder does 
it become, but only comparatively. In the extreme north there is 
no Winter in our sense. 

In Southern California both Winter and Summer are further 
modified by the geographical situation mentioned in a preceding 
page. 





.0UTHERN 

SALIPeRNIA. 



[HE reasons for the peculiar climatic conditions that have 
caused Southern California to be set apart by common 
consent, and considered a separate country, have already been 
briefly given. 

So great is the comparative difference between the two sections of 
the State, that there has been for some years a local rivalry. Indeed it 
may almost be said that everybody, in California or out of it, regards 
the two sections as entirely distinct. It is so thought of and spoken 
of. The distinction has produced a "boom " in which the northern 
three-fourths of the State has not shared. It has given rise to an 
enormous literature and endless discussion, all with a climatic ten- 
dency, and nearly all included under the general head of advertising. 

For it has been discovered at last, and after more than thirty 
years of neglect, that all the advantages, benefits and glories of 
which California-at-large has justly boasted since 1846, exist in 
intensified form in that neglected corner of her area which was of 
all men considered as but little better than the Yuma and Mojave 
10 (143) 



144 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



deserts lying in suspicious contiguity close beside. Every Californian 
of the old time who strayed thither strayed out again. There was 
" Sunshine and Sand." The soil was a species of concrete to any 
judge of soil, covered with a merely ornamental and superfluous 
layer of fine sand, that swirled and shifted with every wind. A 
horrid river-bed, a mere convenience as an occasional sewer for 
cloud-bursts, wide and gray and dry, and littered with round 




An Unoccupied Nook. 

boulders, and treeless and forsaken, was occasionally encountered. 
A clump of willows or a bunch of live-oaks grew here and there. 
The brown mountains fenced the valley round, and they were bald, 
silent, changeless, desolate. There were almost no inhabitants. 
The old missions were there, encountered far apart and falling 
into ruin, and once in a long time there was a cluster of adobe 
houses answering mutely to some sacred and sonorous name 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 145 

like NuESTRA Sexora Reina de Los Angeles ; — a glittering city 
now known as "' Laws Anglees," — and San Carlos de Monterey, 
San Antonio de Padua, San Juan Capistrano, San Luis 
Obispo, and a hundred other Sans and Santas, all flavored with 
south-of-Europe sacredness and Spanish sonorousness of idea and 
language. 

The people one met were queer. They were Spanish peasants ; 
€x-soldiers stranded in this far clime so much like Madre Espana; 
and poor devils of Pueblos. They held the country long, as time 
goes modernly, but it turned out that they did not belong there, and 
•could not stay. As to how some of them went, see " A Century of 
Infamy," by Mrs. Jackson. 

There was sunshine, as mentioned, but no water, no soil, no hope. 
It is not definitely discovered as yet, to whom belongs the credit of 
re-discovering the country; of seeing with the eye of faith that there 
was something else ; for his name is drowned in the clamor of a 
** boom " to which all other booms that have been are as nothing. 
Kansas City, and all the Kansas Chicagos, fade into insignificance 
when confronted with a comparison. It may be in its expiring throes 
when these words reach the public. If so it will be a late reminis- 
cence. It is now in the present tense. 

At this date one hears the buzz all around him if he is there. 
The stranger is impressed with the idea that nobody has a genuine 
and unperverted "level " head. All one sees are busily discussing 
one sole, lone, solitary, isolated question ; real estate. Lone and 
unprotected office-girls, gaining a gruesome crust by hammering the 
unmelodious type-writer a little year or two ago, now smile serenely 
upon a world that has never been particularly kind to struggling 
females, for they too "caught on," and now contemplate with chas- 
tened sweetness a bank-account of a hundred thousand or so. Boys 
and youngsters, all trades and occupations, have shared in the opu- 
lent results. Old sea-dogs who had sailed the wide world over,and who, 
.sailor-like, were previously content, have anchored to these rocky 



146 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



hills, and will sail no more. Smart young men from the slow old 
towns and States where booms are never known, and where the 
citizens however worthy and pious do but vegetate, find full scope 
here for a financial genius hitherto unsuspected save by themselves. 
All are talkers upon one eloquent theme ; there are no conservatives 
and silent men. The idea that the word " value " retains any of its 
original significance is discarded. It is all "will be." There is 
practically no present, and yet to this golden present there 




Old California Hacienda. 

is to be no end. It is the curious spectacle of a country 
originally rocky, sandy, silent, useless, wearing only the pe- 
culiar charm all sterile countries seem to wear, suddenly acquir- 
ing a value as though in the core of each of its oranges there 
was hidden a grain of gold ; as if every acre had suddenly ceased to 
be merely soil, and was become a new commodity in the markets and 
desires of men. There is an idea more or less clearly defined that 
every person in the wide expanse of the Union outside of California 
is an mvalid, and must come here. There is nowhere else to go. 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 147 

Perhaps old Palestine was such a land as this when the spies car- 
ried back that somewhat hypothetical bunch of grapes, but if it ever 
was the day has passed. Italy is not such, or Spain, with all its 
olive-orchards which to the mind of Padre Junipero Serra were 
•doubtless typical of those he and his brethren planted here. For 
these glowing Summer days there is no change during all the long 
year. In Winter, — the Winter we fear and dread — the rains come, 
and dusty nature bathes her face and blooms again. The tender 
Toses we nurse and watch, here climb the roof-tree in January. The 
beautiful foliage of Japan rejoices in its exile, and makes the yellow 
road like an avenue in Jerusalem the Glorious. So tickled was the 
concrete soil with the first drink brought it by the contriving Yankee 
out of an iron pipe, that it has not since ceased to laugh. Gerani- 
ums, verbenas, and such weeds, become trees. Plebeian tomato- 
vines live and spread and bear from year to year. Oranges, side- 
by-side with the fruits that everybody's boyhood knows, are expected; 
nobody notices them, though every tree bears three or four times as 
much as such trees do in their natural homes in the tropics. All the 
vast kindred of luxuries patiently waited for and thankfully received 
once in a while in other States are here a matter of course. We 
raise grapes, for instance. Certainly; so does God raise them in the 
woods, for the birds and foxes, and both are about of a kind when 
one comes to compare them with such as grow here on every vine, 
that lie in the dust ungathered, for over-plentifulness. 

Yet the climate that is luxurious in Winter does not grow oppress- 
• ive in Summer. Of ail dog-day resorts this is probably the best. 
It is not believed; the reader will not believe it; but it is true. You 
may walk in the sun, or sit in it, in June or January. It is true that 
within a very limited area one spot may be much hotter than 
another; one side of a row of hills may have at seasons a different 
climate from the other side. A change very perceptible to a con- 
firmed invalid may be had by going a few miles in the same vicinity; 
but the general statement is true. You wear the same clothes the 



143 



OVERLAND GUIDE 



year round. Ever}' night you sleep under a blanket You may 
calculate with certainty U])on what, save a woman's mood, is known 
to be the most uncertain of earthly things; — the weather. 

It is the south-western corner of the American world. Beyond 
the rim of mountains that fence it on the East and North lie the 




Original Ir.habitants of the Sacramento Valley 

voiceless stretches of rock and sand; grown sparsely with yucca 
palms and all the stunted family of gnarled and warty vegetation 
and strewn with volcanic scorite; which you have crossed. Through 
the notches in its western rim is seen the shining sea. Below it lies 
the peninsula of Lower California. But the electric light is glinting. 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 149 

over leagues of what to the Pueblo, the Spaniard, and the early 
Californian alike, was simply yellow desert. In a brief time the 
leaves of palms and cypresses will meet across miles of stately 
avenue, and the white towers of its cities will shine through morn- 
ing mists hke Beulah from afar. Fenced in by distance, desert 
and sea, unknown while the Republic grew to fifty millions of 
people, it was its unguessed destiny to burst at last upon the 
traveller from the windows of a palace-car. When he has seen it 
all; when his mixed sensations have settled down to certain con- 
clusions; when he is tired alike of its oratory and its sweets; when 
he has learned the alchemy that transmutes sand into soil and yellow 
and forbidding nakedness into the verdure of Eden; he may as he 
again turns eastward almost wonder where now is the Angel with the 
Flaming Sword who by all authentic accounts had orders to stand 
at the southern end of Cajon Pass; — that is to say, at the gate of 
the lost paradise. 

Whatever history California has, began, and most of it was en- 
acted, south of the Sierra Madre Range, and a review of it is merely 
a glimpse of those sleepy years when all the life of the country was 
as much as possible like that of Spain, and under a oiimate so much 
like that of Spain that these Latins loved it and fought for it to the 
best of their resources and valor. 

To begin at the beginning, the Bay of San Diego was discovered 
in the month of September, 1542, (December 21st, 1620, being the 
date of the landing of the Pilgrims) by a Portuguese in the service 
of Spain named Cabrillo {Ca.hrce/yo: — little goat; Kid). He was a 
wandering mariner in a new world, sailing unknown seas in the em- 
ploy of the then greatest maritime power of any age. The object 
was not geographical or scientific investigation, but simple, harmless 
conquest. He happened upon this finest harbor but one on the 
Pacific coast, — but no result followed. He merely sailed out again, 
and the important find was almost forgotten for more than fifty 
years. 



150 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



During this interval one Sir Francis Drake, wandering abroad like 
the Little Goat, discovered the place, and had the audacity to name it, 
and all the adjoining country, New Albion. This is the first name 
by which California was known to those by whom, after so long a 
time, it was to be owned and extolled and speculated in. As for 
Drake, all English-speaking people have been trained to regard him 




Beach at San Diego. 

as a great navigator, ranking with Frobisher and Cook. But he was 
not; he was a "pirate." That is what the Spanish historians dis- 
tinctly call him, and his exploit in taking in the Bay of San Diego 
when he did not know anybody had been there before him, so 
angered Felipe II, when he heard of it, that he ordered the place 
*' fortified." 

So a man named Vizciano (a nickname for a man who hails from 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 151 

the Spanish province of Biscay; — a B'ls-ke-a/i-no) came here November 
loth, 1602, for that purpose. This was the first step taken to actually 
occupy the country by white men and Europeans. The place was 
named San Diego. For it must, complying with the pious customs 
of the Spaniards, be San or Santa something. The name is the 
same with St. James, or James (Santiago) who is the patron saint of 
old Spain, and whose name has for hundreds of years been the 
Spanish war-cry. His " day " is the 12th of November; the day of 
the survey of the Bay by Vizciano; and this is why the place remains 
for all time not New Albion, but San Diego. As the name is likely 
to be a frequent one in all Southern California reminiscences, it is 
well enough to remember that it is not pronounced "Dee-a7<:/-go," but 
Dee-a-go, with the "a," — Spanish "e " — as broad as one can get it. 
The name of this holy man is often on the lips of Spaniards, 
especially sailors in foreign parts. That is why they are universally 
nicknamed " Dagos," meaning " Diegos "; — Jameses. It is a subject 
•of appropriate mention here because there are dozens of euphonious 
Spanish names in California, both the meaning and pronunciation of 
which are disregarded equally with this. 

From this 12th of November, 1602, that which is now known as 
Southern California was called "Alta " California; — an almost pre- 
cisely opposite designation to the present one, given in distinction 
to the Peninsula, now, as then, called " Lower " California. The 
Spaniards of those times knew little or nothing of what we call Cali- 
fornia. It seems from later events that they were very ignorant of 
its resources when they lost it, two hundred and forty-four years 
later. But what they considered to be theirs was without boundary 
or limit in any direction. As usual, they did not know what they 
had, either commercially or geographically. 

Events moved so very slowly in those days that it was not until 
July I St, 1769, a date which brings us very near to the beginning of 
our Revolutionary war and something to date from, that the actual 
occupation of the Pacific coast by Europeans began. Then one of 



152 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



the most remarkable men of those times, a Franciscan friar named 
Junipero Serra, [Hu-neep-a-ro Ser-ra/i) with his companions, came 
to San Diego to establish a mission. It is so very easy to say they 
came, and so easy to do it now, that it is difficult to appreciate the 
fact that they had a terrible time of it, and that some who started 
never reached the place at all. The soldier and the priest came 




Unconverted Aborigines of Southern California. 



SV^W 



together, as usual, and the conquest was one of Church and State 
combined. They camped on this desolate shore to create a peculiar 
history, and leave results that have not yet departed. San Diego 
was the spot where civilization began, and the place has also the 
honor of being the initial point of the second and m.ore wonderful 
civilization which was to follow, when in 1846 Commodore Stocktoa 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 



153' 



entered the harbor with the frigate Constitution, and proceeded to 
occupy the antique earthwork above the Old Town of San Diego, 
which has since then been known as Fort Stockton. 

The story of early California is a religious history. It begins and 
ends with the history of missions. The mission of San Diego was. 




A Miss on School 

the mother of all the rest. Fifty years after the establishment of 
this there were twenty others scattered along the coast as far North 
as San Francisco. Though in many cases they were fifty miles 
apart, their boundaries joined. They occupied the land. In 1825, 
when the Spanish rule had departed from Mexico and they had 
begun to rapidly decay, they still owned 1,200,000 head of cattle^ 



154 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

more than 100,000 horses, 15,000 mules, 100,000 sheep, and innu- 
nierable swine. They had not less than a million dollars in dust, 
bullion and coin, not to mention treasures in the form of gold and 
silver statues, crucifixes, and other church property. They had 
established a foreign trade, and did a lucrative business in hides, 
horns, tallow, etc. It was then, and would be now but for the fact 
that the land has grown too valuable, the finest cattle country of 
which there is any knowledge. About 1820 this religio-commercial 
arrangement had grown to be the most remarkable missionary 
scheme the world has seen. The beginnings had been honest 
■enough, entered into in peril and carried out in good faith. In the 
end, and long before the end, the enterprise had degenerated into a 
money-making scheme, backed by plain, simple, undisguised slavery. 
There were twenty thousand "Christianized " Indians in and about 
the various missions. Every one was an agricultural slave, held and 
wofked as such for pecuniary profit. When unwilling they were 
flogged, confined, starved or tortured. Besides these miserable 
•creatures there were at least a hundred thousand still wild and 
unconverted ones, to whose spiritual welfare nobody paid the 
slightest attention. "Ranching" had become the business, with a 
droning accompaniment of religious services. The civil officers, the 
alcaldes and commandantes, were partners with the Church in tMs 
business. During the lapse of a half-century or more, the Spaniards 
who owned Southern California had every inducement to become the 
idlest, proudest, most independent and wealthy provincials on the 
continent. 

And they seem to have improved the opportunity. You may see 
the remains of it wherever you encounter a son of the soil. Con- 
versation with the elders of them always elicits a vain regret that 
the old times did not stay. The change, when it came, ought to 
have made a millionaire of every holder of a grant, for it trans- 
formed an unknown and almost worthless Mexican province into one 
of the great States of the Union, but it did not have that effect. 




(155) 



156 • OVERLAND GUIDE. 

These first families often have a bearing that makes you privately 
smile, for they retain amid all the changes and after so long a time, 
almost all of the traditional Spanish moods, gaits, hauteurs and 
arrogances. Sometimes, though not often, there has evidently 
been an admixture of Indian blood. Nearly all that are left are 
strong reminders of the happy times when no Spaniard in California 
€ver actually worked, no matter how poor ; when the Christianized 
Indians were his own in the name of piety ; when he owned all the 
surroundings of a narrow and provincial magnificence. An aristoc- 
racy had grown up here the patent to which consisted only in being 
a native of California. They had wealth galore. Their beautiful 
•women grew up sprightly, frivolous and pious, precisely like their 
^reat-great-grandmothers in old Spain ; only incomparably richer. 

They imagined they had all this sunny world to themselves, and 
were borp and died in it, secure and content. They had practically 
forgotten Spain, caring no more about it than we do about England 
or Germany. They called themselves Mexicans only because it was 
necessary to be something, and they cared very little for that far- 
away power, or for any other. They did not dream of the destiny, 
•or want of destiny, in store for them at the hands of a republic of 
whose existence they only knew from "around the Horn." 

The change came suddenly. From August 6th, 1846, to December 
2d, of the same year, had been passed by a squad of men who were 
considered "The Army of the West," in marching from the banks 
■of the Missouri to a pass on what is now known as Warner's Ranch 
in San Diego County. They were met there on December 6th, by 
the Mexican force, and the bloody little battle of San Pascual (Pas- 
qual) was fought. It was a victory for the " invaders," but it cost 
the lives of nineteen officers and men, only two of whom were killed 
by bullets, the remainder being the victims of the characteristic 
Spanish "cold steel." If there is not a national cemetery in this re- 
mote corner of our dominion it would seem that there should be. 

The little command continued its march to San Diego and a junc- 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 



157 



tion with Stockton, and " Alia California" was practically gone from 
the Spaniard forever. 

But already in 1845 five thousand Americans had crossed the 
plains into California, having made a journey a good deal longer and 
harder than any mentioned in these pages. It will be recalled that 
Captain Donner and his party perished in a snow-storm in 1846. 
Then the romance and the tragedy of California began. After the 
episode of Sutter's Mill the country filled very rapidly. But the im- 




Improved. 

migration tended northward entirely, and the growth of the State 
was mainly there for thirty-five years. A few years ago the results 
of agricultural and irrigation experiments began to demonstrate the 
wisdom of the Spaniard's choice. Southern California has of late 
years attracted more attention than any other country of equal size 
has ever done. 

Southern California, solely considered, has been so much talked of 
and written about that the idea that it is a geographical and munici- 




(158) 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 159 

pal subdivision of the State would be a perfectly natural one. But it 
has no specific boundaries. The name is a purely local one. It is 
supposed to be composed of the counties of Santa Barbara, Ventura, 
Los Angeles, part of the huge county of San Bernardino, and all of 
the equally huge San Diego. That is, run a line East from the 
northern boundary of Santa Barbara County, and all South of it is, 
by common consent, Southern California. 

A glance at the map will show that this is but a small portion 
of the territory included within the boundaries of this great State. 
It is outside of the great valleys ; it is fenced off ; it is but a 
pocket, — a corner. Yet this " small " territory contains nearly ninety 
thousand square miles. The irregular square comprising Massachu- 
setts, Rhode Island and Connecticut would be less than one-fourth 
of it. Los Angeles County; a very small one for California; is two- 
thirds as large as Massachusetts, while San Diego County is rivalled 
only by Yavapai, in Arizona, and is considerably larger than an aver- 
age State. 

Another curious fact is that only an infinitesimal corner of 
this corner has given the country its world-wide reputation. The 
little nook where the Coast Range divides and runs off eastward, 
while another, and lower range, continues its southern direction, is 
the centre of richness and celebrity. Everybody has heard of the 
San Gabriel Valley, yet it is only about twenty miles long and ten 
miles wide. The whole San Bernanuino Valley, lying south of the 
range of that name, extends only from San Bernardino to 
Los Angeles, but it is a present or prospective garden from end 
to end. 

It is necessary to take what is called a "bird's-eye" view of the 

country. If a miniature cast were taken of Southern California, as 

has been done of Switzerland, looked down upon it would casually 

appear to be nothing but mountain ranges, spurs, and hills. But, 

closely inspected, there could be seen some small valleys nestled in 

between. Therein lies the secret. These valleys ; mere nooks of a 
11 



160 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



mountain world ; of all shapes and dimensions; unimportant as to 
size when compared with the country but big enough of themselves, 
and each one an Eden of fertility ; have given Southern California 
the fame no other region ever had. 

Out to the south-eastward of Los Angeles stretches the Colorado 
Desert. It occupies, with other and smaller patches of the same 
desert under different names, the greater portion of the country. It 
is just like what the wayfarer has recently crossed between The 




Mountain Glimpse 



Needles and Barstow. It grows even more hideous in the south- 
eastern part of San Bernardino County; — on down to old Fort Yuma 
on the Colorado. There are places there where the climate seems 
unmitigated by a single redeeming circumstance. One spot* is 



* On Tuesday last, the men employed by the Southern Pacific Company, three miles east 
of Indio struck a steady flow of pure water at 540 feet depth. The present flow is about 
10,000 gallons per hour, but the engineer in charge expects to obtain a flow of at least 24,000 
gallons, when the pipe is cleared of clay and gravel. Work has been going on for the past 
six weeks on this well, the success of which will undoubtedly result in many more being 
hored.— Arizona Citizen. 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 161 

three or four hundred feet lower than the adjacent sea, and is a kind 
of geographical Hades all the year. Always in sight, from every 
elevation, are the glowing edges of some desert stretch where man 
has not dreamed of residence or toil. 

We will venture the statement that the desert is in nature precisely 
like the rest. It does not seem so now, but it was so not many years 
ago, when all the now lovely valleys were sun-baked ovens no one 
had thought of occupying. 

The eastern man who is on his way to California should remember 
that he is about to witness something to which he has heretofore 
been an entire stranger. The remotest traditions of the Saxon race 
have left it out. It is the making and occupying of a new country 
without natural resources except as to climate, by entirely artificial 
helps. It is a scheme of geographical Redemption. Water is the 
transforming power. None of this wonderful country ; hardly an 
acre beyond the occupations of the original Spaniards ; could be 
occupied now save for the skillful bringing of water where it never 
was before. 

If you should go into any nook of the Colorado Desert, and get 
water there by boring or ditching, you will find the apparently sterile 
soil the richest in the world. If there is water enough, an Eden 
will grow green there also. In time to come there will be oases 
there, and it will be no more strange, no more curious to the visitor's 
eye, than it is now to see the mysterious streams and flowing wells 
that are a feature of the redeemed portion. 

There was, under the Spanish occupancy, a little water. There 
were " rivers," such as they were, as the Los Angeles, the San Gabriel, 
the Santa Ana. In an eastern sense they were ridiculous. They 
did not flow between defined banks; for a good part of the year per- 
haps, they did not flow at all. They had a way of dodging under the 
ground for miles at a time. Their wide beds were marked by gray 
sand and round boulders. There merely seemed to have once been 
a river there, — perhaps. At other places their current gently flowed, 



163 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

and at these localities the Mission fathers and the Spaniards made- 
their improvements. But Spanish irrigation was wasteful and neg- 
ligent of what little water they had. When the Yankee concluded 
to come he took measures to conduct the streams in cement-lined 
ditches and through pipes. Then he began to bore. Not content 
with a perpendicular hole, some of his Artesian exploits are hori- 
zontal. Boring into the side of a mountain, he coaxes the stream 
that has sunk there out to him by gravity. The expedient occurred 
to him of damming the ends of mountain canyons, and making a 
reservoir. All his experiments have been successful. Indeed the 
story of the country is a romance of unlooked-for successes. There 
is much more water than the first settlers dreamed there was, and it 
requires less to make the country fruitful than the Spaniards 
thought. 

Thus, there is likely to be a surprising awakening for any eastern 
traveller who comes to Southern California with only the flowery 
side of the country uppermost in his dreams. There are no level, 
black acres of government land awaiting the plow; there are no roll- 
ing green prairies. Seen as it lies, and compared by sight alone 
with such countries as Illinois or Missouri or Kansas, the region is. 
miserably poor. More than half of it is irredeemable after water 
has done all that it can do. Barren places abound in the richest 
parts. Patches pitilessly desolate lie beside gardens. The country 
can never become either in appearance or .reality a vast vegetable 
garden. The charm of variety will still remain, no matter what 
improvements are made. 

This is fortunate from a view which is undoubtedly the practical 
one. The country owes its fame and its unprecedented "boom" to 
the facilities it offers for the enjoyment of life. Both in climate and 
scenery there is little left to be desired. The struggle with the 
alternations of intense heat and bitter cold, and deep mud and wet 
seasons, and coughs and general discomfort, is forever over here. 
Wherever there is a valley where water has come the productiveness. 




Mountain and Valley. 

(163) 



164 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

is enormous. No one who has not seen it can have any conception 
of both the luxuriance and the quality this disintegrated granite 
"soil" brings forth. It cannot be judged by the eye. Some of it 
that appears to be almost pure sand, or even mica, is surprisingly 
rich. It requires only two conditions to make almost the worst of 
it more productive than the loam of primeval woods ; moisture and 
warmth. The last it always has; the first comes by skill and the 
expenditure of capital. 

The appearance of the country as nature left if may suggest to 
the reader none of its capacities. Everything now is an exotic. 
Everything from everywhere will grow. This is what the country 
w-as, as described by Mr. Van Dyke, before the modern miracles had 
been worked. He alludes, of course, to the country as it was then 
habitable; not to the desert. 

"Within this enclosure of desert, mountain, and ocean lies a tract that has not 
its like upon the globe. One sees valleys of the brightest verdure where the grass 
is fed by the drainage of the surrounding hills, and others always green with the 
dense foliage of live-oaks that have stood shoulder to shoulder for ages. * * 

Here a canyon enters the plain with a great wash from some ancient cloud burst or 
season of unusual rain, cutting the level with a long deep gully, and then covering 
it with acres of boulders and gravel; and here another enters by a little soft valley, 
clad in a rich brown carpet of dried clover and flowers, with perhaps a huge rock- 
pile of ancient granite in its centre overshadowed by the sweeping arms of some 
venerable live-oak. There lies the great plain itself, with the distant laguna glitter- 
ing on its breast, with tall slender columns of dust marching slowly over its face 
where the little whirlwinds move along; the Indian girls, bright with gay calico, jog- 
ging on their little ponies. * * * Upon a rising knoll shine the white 
walls of the old Spanish ranch-house, with saddled horses tied to the porch, beneath 
which the owner and his friends are perhaps rolling cigarettes and chattering melo- 
dious Spanish, while the herdsmen are driving the herds without. 

"You see the line of the water course, now perhaps only a long dry bed of white 
sand, winding seaward through long green lines of sycamore, cottonwood, and 
willow, spreading out at times into broad groves. Perhaps the water breaks out 
here and there in a long shining strip, or it may flow on for miles and then sink 
to rise no more. » * * 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 165 

" Along the edges the plains and valleys break into low hills covered with 
thin grayish-green brush, and the little hollows between them are often filled with 
prickly-pear, or the still more forbidding cholla cactus, as high as one's head. And 
often these low hills are themselves hard and stony, and covered with cactus, and 
often are only concretions of cobble-stones, with which the intervening hollows are 
also filled. * * * These hills break into higher ones that roll in all sorts of 
shapes and bristle with dense, dark brush higher than one's head, or perhaps are 
covered with dead grass and scattered green bushes of live-oak, sumac and fuchsia. 
Among these bushes smooth boulders of granite often shine afar like springs on 
the hill-side, or they stand along the crests looking against the sky like houses or 
chimneys. Again some of these hills are only huge undulations of bare dirt, 
reaching for miles like chopping waves upon a stormy sea, some gray, some 
dingy white, others a sickly brown or red. 

" Beyond these secondary hills rise others, thousands of feet high, covered with 
dark-green chaparral, through which perhaps a clump of dark-green sycamores 
marks the presence of water. Or they may be from base to summit studded with 
boulders, amid which the lilac, manzanita, and live-oak struggle for foothold. 
Others again have long, smooth slopes, golden with dead fox-tail grass, over which 
venerable live-oaks stand scattered. And among the fostering shoulders of these 
lower mountains are often little gardens of living green, some'.imes sunk like 
lakes into their very tops. Between the ranges of such hills may lie broad valleys, 
or wide table-lands, with surfaces like rolling prairie, all lifted into the region of 
abundant rains. And far above all else rise fir-plumed mountains, whose sides 
are robed in dark forests, below whose heads the clouds float in long streams, 
whose highest gulches are white with snow far into the summer, while in winter 
it often lies twenty feet deep, though the orange tree is blooming scarce twenty 
miles away." 

This brief and comprehensive picture embodies much of the charm 
of the country, and is at least suggestive of the fact that the region 
is unique in appearance as it is in climate and products. The author 
adds a contrasting picture. He says: 

"Such was the view of the land a few years ago; but now valley, slope, and 
mesa, and even the mountain-sides, are dotted with bright and beautiful homes, 
while villages and even cities are rearing tall spires from the lately bare plains. 
* * * Hundreds upon hundreds of handsome houses, embowered in every 
variety of shrubbery, now rise amid orange and lemon groves, fields of alfalfa. 



166 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



orchards where the foliage of the apricot, prune, plum, walnut, almond, peach, or 
pear hide the ground beneath, vineyards where over sixty kinds of grapes are 
growing, and the plats of raisin-grapes alone are larger than many wheat-fields of 
the Middle States." 

These pictures might be made indefinitely by any visitor who had 
the love of nature to understand them and the skill to describe them. 
But only actual presence can give the actual and almost indescrib- 
able charm. And the growth, the changes, the unparalleled im- 
provement, is not embroidery. It was done for money, and it brings 
money. The country is not one for the pioneer; it is rather the 
land of the millionaire. No man of quite moderate means has any 
call to California for an improvement of his fortunes. The " day 
of small things" has passed. It is rapidly becoming the most 
opulent region under the American Flag. Its acres are purchased 
as a luxury. When the " boom " is a thing of the past the situation 
will not be greatly changed, for the reason that there is no other 
place on earth where a life without toil can be so greatly enjoyed. 

As a place to go, a land in which to escape from some of the studied 
cruelties of winter, a country to live m in chronic tiredness and 
changing health, California has no equal. It does not quite share 
the fate of the other beautiful countries. They are nearly always 
poor. All regions of mountaips and sunshine; of pines and falling 
waters; of natural beauty and wholesome air; are good for little 
else; — all but this. 





South of the Range. 



LIMATE. 



S to the climatic cure for clironic diseases which come under 
jWL the general term of "ill health," all grades and varieties of 
sick people come to California. There are several chronic com- 
plaints for which the Pacific coast is said to offer certain relief. 
Among these is the all-but-universal hay-fever. There are innu- 
jnerable people here who have for some )-ears been rejoicing at the 
success of a scheme for saving their lives by driving mules or 
pruning trees. 

The climate of the whole State is governed largely by the sea. 
From April to October the current of cold water which pours south- 
ward out of Behring Strait has a temperature of fifty-three degrees. 
The north and north-west winds from this, meeting the south-west 
trade-wind, bring a fog which often wraps itself like a gray cloak 
around the Coast Range, but which is carried into the interior only a 
short distance where there are gaps and openings in the range. 
There are at least two distinct climates; the coast and the inland. 
These two have each, in their turn, their several gradations. In one 
place the coast will be unsuitable for invalids; at another locjlity, pos- 
sibly only five or eight miles away, it will be found entirely different. 

(167) 



168 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



San Diego has the most equable and changeless climate known,, 
yet some of the bleakest spots on earth lie in sight of it. A mount- 
ain, even a ridge, may practically change the climate to an invalid. 
To realize this fact actual presence is necessary. The State has 
been from the earliest times a climatic puzzle, though all changes 
and varieties must come only within limits which seem very narrow 
to a stranger. One grows very particular after a little whil^. There 




Sierra Madre Villa— San Bernardino Valley. 

are wraps and overcoats in plenty on a dummy train between San 
Diego and National City, for instance, though it be August. One 
of the places is only five or six miles away, but exposed to the sea- 
wind, and seems to be looked upon very much as Kansas people 
look upon Dakota. There is often an apprehension of cold amusing 
to a stranger, as there is in Mexico or the West Indies. There is 
comfort in a fire "to get up by," in a California valley where frost 



CLIMATE. 169 

has never been known. Overcoats, or pretences of overcoats, are 
carried and worn where the bitterest cold, actual cold, that ever 
comes would not wither the petals of a hot-house lily. 

These sensations are largely due to variety of surface. In the 
Valley of the Amazon, in the heart of tropical Brazil, Midnight 
and Noon are nearly the same the whole year -through. Where 
there are hills and valleys, a wide and open country round, and the- 
sea near at hand, the sensations, though not the actual changes per- 
haps, are very different at noon, night and morning. 

The following explanation of the great Californian climatic puzzle- 
is copied from one of the numerous immigration publications, and 
the name of the author is unknown: 

" The northern boundary of California is at about latitude 42 de- 
grees north, while the southern boundary is very nearly at 32 degrees, 
north latitude. On the Atlantic coast, Boston, Massachusetts, occu- 
pies very nearly the same relative position as the northern boundary 
of California, and the city of Chicago is very nearly in the same 
latitude, while the city of Savannah, Georgia, corresponds with the 
extreme southern boundary of California. What a stretch of sea- 
coast for a single State! 

"One fact will suffice to show the great contrast of climates as. 
between the Pacific coast and the Atlantic coast. At Oroville, ia 
Butte County, which is very near the 40th parallel of north latitude, 
oranges, lemons, limes, pomegranates, and other semi-tropical fruits 
are produced with as great or even greater success than the same 
fruits are produced on the coast of Florida, at the 30th parallel of 
north latitude, or 720 miles south of Boston and 600 miles 
south of Oroville. When it is considered that but for the 
ameliorating climatic influences of the Gulf Stream, Eastern 
Florida could not successfully produce the semi-tropical fruits 
named, and that Oroville is at least 150 miles inland from the Pacific 
coast, with the Coast Range of mountains, from 3,000 to 4.000 feet 
high, intervening, and is located in the foot-hills of the Sierra. 



170 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



Nevadas, at an elevation of about i,ooo feet above the sea, some 
faint conception of the wonderful contrast between the climates of 
the Atlantic and Pacific coasts may be obtained. 




The Big Trees. 



" Oroville is mentioned simply because it is one of the most north- 
•«rn points in California in which the semi-tropical fruits have been 



CLIMATE. 



17t. 



very successfully cultivated, but all along the foot-hills of the Sierra 
Nevada mountains, at about the same elevation as Oroville, to Los. 
Angeles county, these fruits may be, and have been, cultivated with 
equal success. The length of this belt of country is about 400 
miles, by from 10 to 15 miles wide. 

" In many localities in and along the east base of the Coast 
Range of mountains, for the same distance north and south, the 
tropical fruits are cultivated with good success. The wide, open 
valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers and their 
large tributaries, are not so favorable for the cultivation of these 
fruits, neither in the composition of the soil nor the characteristics 
of the climate. 

"Having pointed out the great difference of the climates of the 
Pacific coast and the Atlantic coast, by a reference to some of the 
productions at different points, attention is now called to the follow- 
ing table, which shows the contrast as indicated by the thermometer. 

" Taken the months of January and July as representing the ex- 
tremes of heat and cold of the year, and given the mean temper- 
ature of place named for each month, points in California are 
contrasted with other points in the United States and Europe. 



Tlace. 



Chicago, 111 

Sacramento, Cal . . . 

Genoa, Italy 

New York 

San Francisco, Cal. . 
Jaclcsonville, Florida 

Nice, France 

Los Angeles, CaL . . 
Savannah, Georgia. , 



Jan. 


July. 


Dif. 


Deg. 


Deg. 


Deg. 


10 


b3 


52 


45 


73 


28 


40 


77 


3' 


31 


77 


Ab 


48 


58 


10 


58 


80 


22 


46 


76 


30 


55 


67 


12 


39 


82 


43 



Lat. 



D. M. 
41 00 
38 34 
44 24 
40 37 
36 36 
30 50 
40 52 
34 04 
32 00 



" Thus comparing the weather in January and July, at Sacramento, 
with that of same months at Chicago and New York, while it is. 
thirty-five degrees colder at Chicago in January than at Sacramento,, 
it is but ten degress cooler in July at Chicago than at Sacramento,,, 



172 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



■and while it is fourteen degrees colder at New York in January than 
at Sacramento, it is also three degrees cooler at Sacramento in July 
than at New York. 

"Comparing San Francisco weather with the weather at Chicago 
and New York, while it is thirty-eight degrees warmer in winter at 
San Francisco than at Chicago, and seventeen degrees warmer than 
at New York, it is five degrees cooler in San Francisco in summer 
than at Chicago, and nineteen degrees cooler in San Francisco in 
summer than in New York. 




North ot the Range. 

" Going on with the comparisons as between the places named in 
California, and those named on the Atlantic coast and in Europe, it 
will be seen that the extremes between winter and summer in Cali- 
fornia are less than between the same seasons at the most favored 
localties on the Atlantic slope or Europe. In other words, while 
there are warmer winters there are also cooler summers. 

" In addition to the above climatic showings, as indicated by a com- 
parison of the figures of the thermometer, owing to the absence of 
moisture in the atmosphere in California in the summer, eighty 
degrees of heat, as shown there by the instrument, is less oppressive 



CLIMATE. 



173 



than sixty degrees, as shown by the instrument on the Atlantic coast 
or in Europe. In consequence of this difference in the state of 
moisture in the atmosphere, sun-stroke and like affections are un- 
known in California. 

" Owing to the comparative absence of moisture in the air in Cali- 
fornia in summer, however warm the day may be while the sun is 
present, the moment he has gone below the horizon the effects of his 
heating influence cease, and the evenings and nights are cool. 
Everybody sleeps under blankets. 

"For a more full exposition of the climate of California, a.Si com- 
pared with the world's noted climates, we give the following table 
of mean temperature : 



Place. 



Austin, Texas 

Borden, Cal 

Cinninnati, Ohio 

City of Mexico 

Caliente, Cal 

Delano, Cal 

Dijon, France 

Fort Yuma, Arizona. . . . 

■Gilory, Cal 

•Goshen, Cal 

Honolulu, S. I 

HoUister, Cal 

Monterey, Cal 

Milan, Italy 

New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Naples, Italy 

Pajaro, Cal 

Richmond, Virginia.... 
Santa Barbara, Cal. . . 

San Diego, Cal 

Stockton, Cal 

San Mateo, Cal 

San Jose, Cal 

Salinas, Cal 

Soledad, Cal 

St. Augustine, Florida. . 
Vallejo, Cal 



Jan. 


July. 


Dif. 


Deg. 


Deg. 


Deg. 


3b 


84 


48 


42 


8q 


47 


21 


77 


56 


52 


63 


II 


46 


92 


46 


47 


86 


39 


33 


70 


37 


56 


92 


3& 


41 


78 


37 


51 


91 


40 


71 


7« 


7 


48 


73 


25 


52 


5S 


6 


33 


74 


41 


55 


82 


27 


46 


76 


30 


49 


5a 


9 


73 


77 


44 


56 


66 


10 


57 


65 


8 


49 


72 


23 


46 


59 


13 


46 


69 


23 


47 


65 


18 


43 


70 


27 


59 


77 


i3 


48 


67 


19 



Lat. 



D M. 
30 36 

36 00 

39 06 
19 26 
35 00 

35 00 
47 00 
32 43 

37 00 

36 00 
21 16 
36 00 
36 36 
45 00 

29 57 

40 52 

36 00 

37 00 
34 24 
32 4r 
37 56 
37 00 

37 00 
36 00 
36 00 

30 05 

38 05 



" A short statement of the peculiar causes that help to form the 
many climates of California, will help the reader the better to under- 
stand them. 




(174) 



CLIMATE. 175 

" The Golden Gate pass is an opening several miles long but of less 
width, through the Coast Range of mountains, and is the only com- 
plete break or pass in the Coast Range, from the southern to the 
northern end of the basin to which it forms the outlet. 

" Directly opposite the Golden Gate, across the bay of San Fran- 
cisco, and several miles inland, stands the world-famed Diablo 
mountain — apparently representing a section of the Coast Range, 
which, by some ancient disturbance, had been cut out of the space 
now known as the Golden Gate — and moved bodily inland, and 
placed firmly on its base agam. Now, this Golden Gate pass and 
Mount Diablo together form the key to the climate of the interior 
of northern California. Without such pass as an outlet to the inte- 
rior waters, the great basin would be an inland lake. Without such 
pass as an inlet to the currents of moisture-laden atmosphere from 
the ocean, the same basin would be like an oven-heated, arid desert. 
Keeping the above statements and formation of the country in mind, 
the reader is pre^-ared to follow the explanation of the natural 
causes that produce the climate of interior California. 

" The trade winds of the Pacific ocean are constant winds blowing 
from near the equator in a north-easterly direction. These winds 
are, of course, warm, and carry with them large amounts of warm 
moisture in suspension. Were there no break in the Coast Range 
of mountains, they would simply float above them and over the basin 
of the interior, without condensation, and without leaving any 
moisture in the form of rain, winter or summer. As it is, however, 
in the summer these trade winds unite with the cooler winds that 
sweep down the coast from the norf h — Alaska and Behring Straits — 
and entering the Golden Gate pass, strike Mount Diablo and divide, 
the larger portion sweeping up the Sacramento valley, and the lesser 
portion up the San Joaquin valley — thus producing in both these 
valleys, in the summer, dry but delightfully cool summer breezes, or 
tempered trade winds. 

" These breezes generally begin about noon, and last till about 

12 



176 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



midnight of each day. Thus is produced the general summer climate 
of the interior valleys, the cloudless days and cool nights. And 




"^I'OlfNALt.Y 



•^ The Three Brothe<s— Yo Scm 'e 



thus is accounted for the fact that the San Joaquin valley has, as a 
rule, the warmer climate in the summer, and also the fact that in 
the upper or extreme northern end of the Sacramento valley the 



CLIMATE. . 177 

weather is warmer than at points nearer the Golden Gate, hundreds 
of miles further south. Both these uniting currents of air being 
comparatively dry in the summer season, and coming in contact, in 
the valley, with no cool current or surface, no condensation takes 
place, and we have no rain in summer. 

" Now for the winter climate of the interior. But for the opening 
at the Golden Gate and the ingress at that point of winds from 
the ocean, the winter climate of the interior would be dry and cold, 
and probably without even snow to cover and moisten the soil. 
As it is, however, just at the time when there is a tendency to cold 
in the valley, from the absence of the rays of the summer sun, the 
presence of that sun further south over the Pacific ocean heats up 
the water and air there to a greater degree, and the trade winds 
come north with greater vigor and constancy, and meeting at the 
same time more fierce and colder winds from the northern coast, 
: storm centres are formed out at sea, and awaiting some escape for 
their furious natures, very naturally float in at the Golden Gate, 
and, dividing as they strike Mount Diablo, find their way up both 
valleys, discharging the accumulated moisture as they go. But 
instead of bringing with them a lower degree of temperature and 
■colder weather, as on the Atlantic coast, these storms of the Pacific 
modify the temperature, and end in warmer weather. The plain 
reason is that they come from toward the equator, and bring warm 
• air with them. 

** The great variety of configuration of the valleys, presenting end- 
less checks and breakwinds to the ocean air as it comes in at the 
Golden Gate and spreads out, fanshaped, and sweeps up the country, 
■causes corresponding variations of climate. Hence, even in the great 
valleys,while compared to the climate of the Atlantic coast and Missis- 
. sippi valley States, this is mild winter and summer ; still both in winter 
and summer we have almost endless degrees of mildness, amounting, 
practically, to a different climate for each location. This brings 
.about wonderful and almost incredible variations and conditions. 




(178) 



CLIMATE. 179 

"But when we leave the valleys and go up the foot-hills toward 
-either range of mountains, we come in contact with still greater 
varieties of climate. The general slightly undulating elevations of 
these foot-hills have a climate varying but little in its general 
character from the climate of the lower valleys adjacent. But when 
we enter the thousand and one small valleys running up to and 
losing themselves in the equal number of gulches and mountain 
canons, some penetrating the mountain ranges at right angles, some 
presenting their funnel-shaped mouths or approaches directly to the 
currents of the ocean air, and thus leading it in and giving it direc- 
tion into their recesses, and some still opening out into the large 
valleys behind projecting spurs that turn away and exclude these 
prevailing breezes from the small valley, at the gates of which they 
seem to stand as constant and watchful sentinels, in each of these 
valleys we find a climate, though always mild, still in many par- 
ticulars differing from the climate of each of the other valleys of 
the same general character. 

" These small valleys are found at all elevations up the mountain 
slopes, from five hundred to five thousand feet above the level of 
the sea, and each in turn is affected by climatic influences, accord- 
ing to its altitude or elevation. 

" Under such circumstances it is plain that the lowest parts or 
troughs of a valley will, under the influence of the sun's rays, 
become the warmest section of the valley. 

" It is plain, also, that the moment the sun sinks below the western 
horizon, and thus removes th'e heating influence, this warm air in the 
trough of the valley would, being rarefied and lighter than the air 
resting on the mountain slopes above, begin to rise, and the air 
above on all sides would begin to run like water to the lowest 
point, and thus in the latter part of the night and the morning 
the lowest point in the valley would be full of cold instead of warm 
air, and would in turn become the coldest section of the valley. 
If frost occurred anywhere, it would be in this low trough. At 



180 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

some point up the mountain side there might, under such circum- 
stances, be found a warmer place or belt of air than could be 
found above or below it. If so, this would be a thermal, or warm 
belf. But the mountain sides, instead of being a smooth inclined 
plane, are cut by high ridges, on the upper sides of which are 
canyons or gulches, leading off in different directions down toward 
and into the valley below. 

" In the middle of the day, therefore, under the heating influence 
of the sun's perpendicular rays, the middle or trough of the valley 
becomes the warmest. At night, the sun being below the horizon, 
this warm air begins to rise and the cold air up the mountain sides 
begins, like water, to run down. But it can not run down all in one 
sheet, but, like water, it runs down the canyons and gulches and 
seeks the valley in streams or currents. Within the line of these 
streams or currents of cold air it is plain there will be a cold streak 
or section of country, whether high up the mountain side or lower 
down in the valley. But on the lower side of the ridges, which 
check the descending cold air and hold it in streams or currents 
and turn it down the ravines, it is plain there must be a warm sec- 
tion or belt where the heated air of the day remains quiet and 
undisturbed, like still water along some bends or eddies of a great 
river. Here, too, the warm air of the lower valley, rising, finds a 
quiet resting place and helps to keep the section warm and balmy. 

"Thus are produced the warm belts of California, the warm belts 
in the west and mountainous sections of Virginia and North Caro- 
lina, and the eastern sections of Tennessee and West Virginia 
Thus it is, that on account of the warm current of air from the 
equator, sweeping up the valleys during the winter season, combined 
with this peculiar natural phenomena we have just described, that in 
California, at a latitude but little below Boston and Chicago, they 
can grow oranges, limes and lemons, ripening in December, and pro- 
duce cherries, peaches, apricots, nectarines and many of the smaller 
fruits and berries, and vegetables, ripe and ready for market before 



CLIMATE. 



181 



the blossoms appear on the same kinds of trees in the same latitude 
east of the Rocky mountains." 

The foregoing may be taken as a fair explanation of the well- 
known curiosities of the puzzle, at least so far as northern Cal- 
ifornia is concerned. The additional modifying causes in the case 
of Southern California have been mentioned in preceding pages. 
It should also be remembered that the Pacific is full of currents; the 
one coming down through Behring Strait having a low temperature 
as mentioned. All winds off of the Pacific seem cool, almost cold, 
when they reach one round a point or through a notch direct. When 
in Winter, one sees the snow on the north side of the San Bernar- 
dino Range, and the flowers on the south side, and observes that the 
difference is made by coming southward through Cajon Pass, it has 
a tendency to produce in his mind a high regard for merely local in- 
fluences. The question of the difference between a valley and a 
ridge is one of prime importance only to the more delicate class of 
health-seekers. To the average eastern man the execrated and ab- 
jured climate of San Francisco does not seem so very bad. Com- 
pared with anything known east of the Rocky Mountains, every 
nook of the State is a revelation. 




182 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 




Boundaiy-Line Monumsnt, near San Diego. 



N '(3-ENERAL 



ZOOMING down from Barstow to San Bernardino there is a 
V^ suggestion of a river on the right. It is a desert stream called 
the Mojave (Mo-ha/i-ve), beginning and ending on the north side 
of the range. Its ultimate destination is the " Sink " of Mojave ; 
a lake of gray mud or sand, passed before reaching Barstow. 

During the afternoon the train traverses the range which is the 
climatic fence of Southern California, through Cajon ( Cah-/io»e : 
a box) Pass. The scenery here, especially in Winter, is very 
striking. The road is very crooked, and the cuts very deep 
and narrow, not through rock, but through a peculiar deep-yellow 
soil. Often the head of the long train may be seen apparently de- 
tached and running alone on the other side of the hill from the 
passenger. These long and narrow cuts were made by the engineers 
with perfect impunity. All the snow that falls, even on the north- 
ern side, scarce serves for more than the tracking of the big Cali- 
fornia hare. 

Once through the pass, and you may see the glitter of the electric 
lights at San Bernardino. 

This is the point on the California Southern road whence you go 
either southward to San Diego, or turn westward to Los Angeles. 
A glance at the map will explain. 

If the journey be direct to San Francisco by this route, the car 
does not turn southward at Barstow, but goes direct to Mojave, 
seventy-two miles further west, and thence northward to San Fran- 
cisco. It will be seen that the same journey can be made -via South- 
ern California, by going to San Bernardino, from there to San 
Diego; back again via San Bernardino to Los Angeles, or more 

(183) 



184 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

directly via Oceanside and through Santa Ana, and northward from 
Los Angeles through Soledad Pass to Mojave and thence to San 
Francisco. The extensions of the railroad system of Southern Cali- 
fornia within the past two years offer one of the most striking 
features of the contrast between the old and the new, and by this 
journey alone, almost without leaving the cars, a general view of the 
country may be obtained, and all the contrasts of shore, valley, and 
mountain be obtained. 

North of Mojave, going either direct by Barstow, or by way of 
Southern California, you enter through the Tehachapi Pass the 
valley of the San Joaquin, and are in the California of the old times. 
Here is the remarkable engineering work called the Loop, and the 
name more or less accurately describes it. This scene, even by 
night, especially if the moon shines, is a very remarkable one. 

Li a pocket at the southern end oU the San Joaquin Valley are 
clustered the three shallow lakes, Tulare, Buena Vista and Kern. 
They are not considered places of interest. 

From the station of Berenda, on the Southern Pacific road, there 
is a short line constructed to Raymond, saving that much horseback 
or stage on the way to Yo Semite and the Big Tree groves. 

There are three Big Tree groves in California, that most frequently 
visited being the Mariposa grove, included in the same tour with the 
Yo Semite. It is almost useless to attempt a new description of 
these wonderful places, which thousands have crossed the sea to 
visit. The enterprise of modern journalism sometimes discovers 
somewhere else bigger trees than these are, but the locality always 
remains doubtful. As they are, they have been drawn, described, 
photographed and wondered over thousands of times. The Sequoia 
seems to remain the sole living representative of a race of giants 
that will never come again. These are but the stragglers of a host, 
outliving their time. All over these mountain sides there are great 
trenches where they have fallen, perhaps a thousand years being 
passed in their slow decay. It is not even known how old these 



IN GENERAL. 



185. 



living ones are, whether they are yet growing, or how long they 
may stand. 

The Yo Semite Valley, very briefly described, is an irregular basin 
about eight miles long and two miles wide, whose sides are irregular 
walls of rock about two miles high. The rim of this amphitheatre 
has notched edges. Of the special points in the edge to which 
names have been given, the following are some: Mount Starr King, 
(named after the eloquent divine of that name, who lived at San 
Francisco and who died some years ago), 5,600 feet; Cloud's Rest^. 




Mcdern Indian Camp, near San Diego. 

6,034 feet; South Dome, 4,737 feet; Sentinel Dome, 4,500 feet; El' 
Capitan, 3,300 feet. 

The lowest point in the rim of the valley which has been specially 
named is 1,800 feet. It must be readily observed, even on paper, 
that these are very unusual elevations to be grouped around an 
amphitheatre in such a manner that most of them are included in 
one view. 

There are eleven water-falls, one of them, the Yo Semite, being 
2,634 feet high, while the Sentinel measures 3,000 feet. By way of 



186 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

comparison, it may be recalled that there are 5,280 feet in a mile, 
and that Niagara is only 163 feet high. Places and falls that are 
pigmies compared to these have a celebrity that is world-wide. 
Might not one better visit California first and Europe afterwards ? 

Yet comparisons, heights and depths, absolute statements, have 
little to do with it. You cannot quite comprehend it even after you 
are there. 

San Francisco is still a place unique, and notwithstanding its 
tens of thousands of annual visitors, and all their letters and con- 
versations afterwards, still worth seeing. The long, deep Bay of 
San Francisco, on whose shore the track lies for thirty miles or more, 
is interesting to that man especially who feels that now the ocean 
which bounds his western shore 1*5 reached at last. 

The tourist has now practically reached the end of a journey 
whose western terminus is in the laqd of contradictions and curiosi- 
ties. It is in no sense a wilderness. The facilities of convenient 
travel are on every hand, and on every hand is a place to go, a 
change of climate, a mountain resort, a watering-place. This most 
favored land on earth is in no respect behind the times in every ar- 
tificial luxury of the century. A thousand pages would be inade- 
quate to describe what might be done. 

But all of us carry to California and elsewhere, our preconceived 
ideas. These govern us wherever we may go. There is little use 
for them; — as little as there can be anywhere on the planet, — in any 
of the various States and Territories briefly described in this volume, 
and in California perhaps least of all. In every respect it is a 
curious country, and often seems not to be known well as yet even 
by the oldest settler. There are facts that indicate that the country, 
like Australia, was originally intended to be left by itself. 

It is comparatively rainless, yet there are places where eighty 
inches of water fall in a year. 

It is the land of all the world for flowers, yet a great portion of it 
is heart-breaking, hopeless, despairing desert. 



IN GENERAL. IQT 

It can, and will, produce wine enough to supply the epicurean 
tables of the world. Yet there is but one species of native grape ; 
all the rest have been imported as experiments; — and all grew. 

The trees are not only indigenous, but are mostly confined to this 
coast. The three species of the Sequoia, including the redwood, 
never grew elsewhere. Yet you may look in vain for familiar trees 
like the maple, hickory, bass-wood, gum-tree, persimmon, sassa- 
fras, birch, chestnut, or almost any others that would make the 
woods look home-like. It is the only place in the world where 
Torrey's Pine has been found. This rarest tree on earth grows 
even here in only one locality, and you may see a few of them 
near the station of Del Mar, on the California Southern road. The 
lawns smile with grass that does not grow elsewhere. Even the 
trees which have familiar names are unlike the trees of the same 
name in the East. There is an extensive and beautiful family of 
smaller and greater growths, all differing in appearance and nature 
from what we would imagine they were from their familiar names. 

Of birds, there are some three hundred and fifty species native to 
the country. Of these, twenty kinds are woodpeckers. There are 
thirty-seven different birds of prey, and among these, twelve kinds. 
of owls. None of these have ever lived elsewhere. 

Out of one hundred and fifteen kinds of mammals, twenty-seven 
are carnivorous. Yet the familiar animals of youth, the woodchuck, 
'possum, wolverine, mink, musk-i"at, otter, and beaver all are want- 
ing. Our familiar rat is not there, but his place is fully and credit- 
ably filled by another, who keeps up the family reputation. Califor- 
nia has not even our familiar family mouse, but the place of the poor 
little bead-eyed victim of universal feminine vindictiveness is taken 
by another who is represented as "having a more fuzzy tail"; — teeth 
and general propensities probably very much the same. There is 
also a jerboa, or jumping, kangaroo mouse, and another who seems 
a unique and interesting combmation of mouse and squirrel. 

All our familiar squirrels are missing, red, gray and fox. There 



188 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



are not even chipmunks. Above a certain elevation there is a squir- 
rel, but he doesn't act and bark like our gray squirrel, and must be 
passed as a Californian. The squirrel of the country can climb, but 
won't, and has decided to live on the ground. His numbers, like 
other things of the country, are amazing, and while he is good eat- 
ing, nobody kills him because he is too easily hunted. He is said to 
be entirely capable of visiting the dining-room and eating the butter 
off of the middle of the table befote the family can be seated. 




California Orange Tree. 

Nearly all these beasts can do without water. They wait until it 
rains, and if it does not rain in time they go to sleep and wait. 

"Molly Cotton-tail " does not live in California, but her place is 
taken by four or five varieties of hares, one of them a monster weigh- 
nine or ten pounds, who regards the utmost efforts of the ordinary 
dog with cool contempt. There is a little cotton-tail too, but almost 
totally unlike her of the Middle and Eastern States 



IN GENERAL. 189 

The birds have features and feathers like their cousins in the 
East in many cases, but when they have they act so differently that 
one wonders what ails them. It is a country where robins take to 
the mountains, where the mocking-bird is credited with but eight 
notes sung over and over, where the meadow-lark is a hermit of the 
chaparral, where the big " crow " blackbird has assumed the habits of 
his little brown cousin and sits on the cows' backs, and where the wood- 
pecker spends most of his time picking up ants and beetles on the 
ground. Jenny Wren, darling of childhood, is not here, but her place is 
taken by a wee gray cock-tail about half her size, or by another as 
big, but not of her color, that " never looks too fine.'" These, how- 
ever, are so glib and pert that there is no doubt about their being 
wrens. Our King Bird has degenerated here into a "drab-coated 
rascal that lives on nothing but bees, and wakes one an hour before 
dawn with notes like the filing of a saw." 

Among insects, ants of all varieties, and all grades of industry 
and vindictiveness, swarm from the coast to the mountain-tops. 
Some are almost as tiny as chigoes, while others have a fearful 
bigness. 

The wild bee, buzzing everywhere, and even occupying the deserted 
and decaying mission-buildings to the exclusion of other visitors, is 
not "wild" at all. There were no bees in all this land of flowers 
until they had escaped from those who brought them here from the 
East. There is, among a half-dozen kinds, a wasp nearly two inches 
long. There are two or three kinds of bumble-bees, none of them 
belonging to the bee family. One of them looks like "a cross be- 
tween a bat and a humming-bird," and another is of enormous size 
and hums like a deep bass reed. 

There is a tarantula that can bite through a green twig as large as 
a lead pencil, that lives in a satin-lined hole closed with a lid with a 
perfect hinge, that is a beast of prey in all senses. Yet there is a 
wasp ferocious enough, and big enough, to kill him whenever he can 
be caught away from his aesthetic and elegant habitation. 



190 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



There are beetles big and little, gray, brown, yellow, purple, blue,, 
crimson, banded, striped, long-geared, stubby, soft, hard, flying, 
jumping, and snap-backed. Yet the cockroach and bed-bug are 
almost or quite unknown. But many a car-load of baggage and 
household goods has gone across, and if one of them should get 
away from his nook in these, there is nothing to hinder his assump- 
tion of family habits, and getting a living and begetting a numerous 
offspring, somehow. 




A Nook on the Coast. 



There are, so far as yet counted, ten separate families of mosqui- 
toes. It is a consolatory statement that "some of them do not bite." 
Then again, others do. 

There are two or three varieties of fleas. Some of them only live 
upon hares and rabbits, and do not bite people. But he who does is 
" a savage wretch that never wearies of anything except the old 
place. He takes a new spot every second." It is comforting to know 
that he, being select in his tastes, does not bite everybody. It is also 
kind of him to disappear in Winter entirely. 

There are two kinds of scorpions. They are not abundant, and 



IN GENERAL. 191 

only traditionally, perhaps, come and get into bed with you. There 
is a gigantic earwig called a centipede, six or eight inches long, but 
keeping generally to himself in his lowly habits of life. 

There are innumerable lizards, of all sizes, from eight to ten 
inches m length downward. Most of them are agile and beautiful, 
and all are harmless. There are none of the familiar tree-toads that 
chirp our brief Summer nights away. 

California snakes all hibernate even in the very warmest localities, 
where there is never frost. The only poisonous snake is the rattle- 
snake. They are rare and sluggish. 

Notwithstanding the apparently formidable array of reptiles and 
insects one could make out in this prolific country, the Californian 
would gladly take ten times the number he has of centipedes, scor- 
pions, lizards, snakes, beetles and earthquakes, rather than give up 
his present immunity from wind-storms, hydrophobia, sun-stroke, hay- 
fever and lightning. The best writer on California topics, Mr. Van 
Dyke, says " the whole number of persons in the whole southern 
half of the State (where thousands sleep all Summer on the open 
ground) injured by snakes and poisonous reptiles, animals, etc., 
in the last ten years, is not equal to the number killed by lightning 
alone in one year in one county in many Eastern States, to say 
nothing of cyclones, mad dogs, etc." 

Of flowers it is entirely useless to begin to write. The green- 
houses that wealthy people build, adorned with stucco rocks, and 
with waterfalls that remind one of an accidental leak, and that are 
warmed with coils of plumber's pipe, or with the uncongenial heat of 
a furnace, show all over the land the appreciation in which are held 
what to many gentle souls are the sweetest and choicest gifts of 
heaven ; — the flowers. Yet all the contrivances of art never pro- 
duced under glass anything to equal a nook in the forest, a corner 
by the wayside, or a poor man's door-yard, in the Californian mid- 
winter. Of infinite variety naturally, nearly all of delicate tints and 
beautiful forms ; a natural flora in its season the most varied and 

13 



192 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



beautiful on earth ; they have been supplemented by every exotic of 
the tropics. The hillsides that dazzled the wanderer with a blaze of 
color from acres and roods of pink, great fields of violets, vast 
reaches of blue, endless sweeps of white, were not enough. The 
most beautiful flowers and trees of the world now grow and bloom 
in California. The long, dry Summer has its compensation when 
the rains of this glorious Winter begin to fall. Without doubt or 
question it is the realm of flowers.. 




s A Health Resbrt. 



The last man who asks a question about this land of contradic- 
tions will be he who wishes to know if he will recover his health if 
he should go there. 

The general character of the seasons has been considered on 
previous pages. Dry, damp, cold, hot, may be found with all their 
variations within a few miles of travel; only the very damp and the 
actual cold are a little scarce. Many an invalid has been sadly dis- 
appointed, while many another has been cured. There may be for 
you little or nothing in any climate. You have waited until you are 
almost dead, according to a time-honored American custom. There 
IS bad weather in California, as there is in all lands, and some of it 
may seem to you awful; as when the dust that has been lying in the 
roads as fane as wheaten flour for months is driven by the winds; 
when the chill of the early morning strikes you so hard that you 
look with wonder upon the blooming exotics that do not wither; 
when the gray fog which has blown in from the sea through a notch 
in the mountains wraps you like a cloak because you are not quite 
Tiigh enough to be above it; when the "night air," — the dread of 
our grandmothers, — chills _;>'<?« to the bone without turning the petals 
of a single rose. 

But you may rely upon the fact that the fogs disappear; that the 
night is followed by a day almost always warm, bright, beautiful; 
that the winds are always dry, always above fifty-five degrees, 
and that there are places enough where they can scarcely be felt 
at all. 

Of all things do not make the not unusual mistake of going in the 
"Winter and coming away in the Summer, under the impression that 

(193) 



194 



OVERLAND GUIDE. 



you cannot stand the heat, the malaria, the insects, the dryness, or 
that you must go back anyhow, and attend to business. It is dis- 
tinctly not like Florida, where the only thing to go for is the Winter. 
The almost universal testimony by those who should know is that if 
you are to receive any benefit of permanent value you are likely to- 
get it in the Summer of Southern California. Often, they say, it is 
the Summer only that cures. Do not return at its commence- 
ment to the place where 
ill-health began. 

There is little in climate 
as an actual cure. Re- 
move irritation from the 
throat and lungs and they 
cure themselves. Acquire 
a store of vitality and'build 
up the general strength, 
and to do so go to a 
country where you can do 
it best, and you have the 
whole climatic receipe, per- 
haps. If one is so far 
gone with consumption 
that all he can do is to sit 
in a chair and keep up 
his strength with tonics until the climate can cure him, he might 
perhaps better far stay at home. Many a sorrowful pilgrimage has. 
been uselessly made both ways because of this mistake. 

If the invalid realizes in time, and while there remains sufificient 
strength to use them, that the actual advantages consist in the 
opportunity to be out of doors nine days in ten, and often every day 
for months at a time, where cold and dampness almost do not exist, 
where he can walk, ride, hunt, farm, drive team, trim vines, or merely 
loaf and sit in the sun, and can make up his mind to stay at least a. 




AS A HEALTH RESORT. 195 

year, and if he grows better to stay permanently, at any price, then 
it is likely that Southern California will cure him if there be a place 
and a climate that can. 

The country has begun to acquire fame as a good place for women 
and children. Every observing visitor is impressed by the sight of 
the youngsters who are sensibly turned loose by their ancestors, and 
who rolic and run barefoot in the most bare-legged and unfashiona- 
ble fashion, out of doors the livelong day, every day unless it rains, 
which last is a contingency that may be considered when it comes. 
Women belonging to the numerous but aristocratic sisterhood that 
never " feels well," seldom smiles, and never grows fleshy, are 
observed to "pick up" wonderfully in these latitudes, and the 
feminine countenance seems much more inclined to rosiness and 
•smiles than it was *' back east." Men engaged in the actual contest 
with the raw wilderness, or worried about the fluctuations of the 
real-estate craze; — as much gambling as ever lard-corner or wheat- 
deal is; — do not look differently from their hard-worked and fretting 
brethren the world over. 

That California is a very curious country, is a fact that will appear 
to you in very strong colors after you have come away again. You 
may add to all these pages tell you, certain historical recollections; 
the immense yield of the precious metals in her earlier history, — the 
days when all those who knew the country best unanimously declared 
that it was "no good for farming"; — the profusion and quality of 
her present products; the energy and genius of her people; the 
princely endowment of her Lick Observatory, and of her schools, 
colleges, asylums, institutes and organized charities; the eloquence 
of her preachers from Starr King down to Kalloch; her authors, 
statesmen and soldiers; her renowned courts of law, whose decisions 
are quoted in every Saxon court; her beautiful women and happy 
children; her tolerance, her anti-Puritan wickedness, and her famous, 
whole-hearted and prodigal hospitality. You may also remember 
the fateful days of the Vigilantes, and the chaos out of which all 



196 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

this order sprung, and recall the latest stories of her millionaire- 
fools, the desperate games of her female adventurers, and the un- 
blushing perjuries of her divorce trials. She must present, notwith- 
standing, the largest progress ever made in thirty-six brief years in 
the whole history of the human race; the most favored land over 
which the standard of any countrj' ever floated. 



THE END. 



0PPENDIX. 



Note. — The journey here briefly sketched may not occupy quite the time stated, 
the incidents remaining the same. Also, the eastern terminus of the Santa ¥6 
Route is now Chicago. The interest to the Western Tourist making the journey for 
the first time being usually from Kansas City westward, only that portion of the 
journey is given. 

ITINERARY. 

Monday : Leaving Kansas City in the morning, arrive in the 
evening at Newton, Middle Kansas, — Supper. During the night 
fhe journey lies westward along the Arkansas River, — first seen 
at Hutchinson, Kan., — across what were once known as " The 
Plains," to and across the western line of Kansas, to La Junta, 
Colorado. Breakfast, Tuesday morning. 

From La Junta the coaches and Pullmans going direct to the 
Pacific coast turn south-westward ; — those for Denver, or Colorado 
Springs and a junction there with the Colorado Midland Railroad 
or the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, going northward. During 
the forenoon Trinidad, at the foot of the Raton Range, is passed, 
and the train climbs the eastern slope and passes through Raton 
tunnel. Dinner at the town of Raton. Supper at the town of 
Las Vegas, whence a branch line of six miles runs to the Las Vegas 
Hot Springs. Beyond Las Vegas is passed the Glorieta Range, 
and immediately beyond this is the station of Lamy, whence a branch 
line of 17 miles goes up to the city of Santa Fe. 

During the night of Tuesday, the train enters the Valley of the 
Rio Grande, passing down this valley as far as Albuquerque, 
where the Pacific coast cars turn westward over the Atlantic & 
Pacific Railroad. 

Passengers for El Paso, or the interior or City of Mexico, are 
carried southward from Albuquerque. 

(197) 



198 APPENDIX. 

Wednesday: Breakfast at Coolidge, near the western line of 
New Mexico. During the forenoon pass Laguna, Fort Wingate, 
etc., and fairly enter the curious country in which there is so little, 
and yet so much, to interest. Dinner at Holbrook or Winslow. 

During the afternoon pass Canyon Diablo, and enter the forest 
region about Flagstaff. Supper at Williams. During the night 
pass some of the finest mountain scenery possible to American 
travel ; about midnight reach Peach Springs, the nearest railroad 
station to the Grand Canyon, which lies directly north ; and strike 
the down grade to the Colorado River. 

Thursday: Breakfast at The Needles, California, at the western 
end of the bridge crossing the Colorado. 

Here begins The Desert, to many travellers not the least interest- 
ing portion of the journey. Dinner at a station reached about one 
o'clock, and at about three o'clock p. m. arrive at Barstow, where 
cars for Los Angeles, San Diego and all points in Southern Cali- 
fornia turn southward to cross the San Bernardino Range through 
Cajon Pass. Supper, San Bernardino or Los Angeles. At San 
Bernardino the cars for Los Angeles turn westward through the San 
Bernardino Valley; those for San Diego direct go southward. To 
Los Angeles, the journey (supposing it to begin on Monday) ends 
on Thursday evening; to San Diego on Friday morning; to San 
Francisco direct, not turning off at Barstow, on Friday morning. 

The distance from Kansas City is: to San Bernardino, 1,740 miles. 
To Los Angeles, 1,800 miles. To San Diego, 1,871 miles. To 
San Francisco (disect), 2,115 niiles. 



N. B. The time-tables of all principal Lines are usually issued at the 
beginning of every calendar month. They show the frequent changes in 
details of time and train service, and the latest should be consulted. 
Mileage, scenery and territory, and usually gross time required, do not 
change, and a Guide is supplementary to the technicalities of the usual 
''folder:' 



Spanish 

GrEeGRAPHieAL RaMES. 



Note. — Many of the geographical names of California and the South-west are 
Indian, or Indian corruptions. There is no definite authority upon pronunciation 
or meaning, and no attempt has been made to give them. On the other hand many 
of the Spanish names are mis-spelled on the maps, often to the extent that it is not 
possible to trace their original significance. Some of them are abbreviations by ear. 
Others have been given by Americans for sound only, and are composites of two 
words not capable of being joined in meaning. Others have a meaning not com- 
plimentary to the place, or ridiculous, or that belongs to the colloquialisms of a 
tongue richer in proverbs, plays upon words and double meanings, than any other. 
Others, having originally been given more than two centuries ago, are to the modern 
Spanish vocabulary what old English would be to ours, and their meaning is doubt- 
ful. There is a very trivial meaning, without significance or value, attached to many 
of these geographical names. In such cases the pronunciation is the chief thing of 
value. Spanish scholars will observe that in words beginning with "c"or "ch," 
etc., the pronunciation prescribed by the Spanish Academy has not been adhered 
to. In many parts of Spain, and in all parts of Spanish America, the lisp which is 
so piquant when used by a Madrid orange-girl is considered rather an aflfectation, 
and " ch " is pronounced as in our word "church," and not like, or nearly like, 
"th" in "thus." The sound of "11"; like that of those letters in our word 
" million," is adhered to, their elimination being in all cases a provincialism. 
Persons unaccustomed to Spanish pronunciation should remember amid the Sans 
and Santas, and " ahs " generally, that the " a " is in all words as it is in our "man" 
or "sand," and the "aw" sound should not be given it. " O," occurring often in 
such words as "los"; — "the," is the same as las, except that it is masculine, and 
the " o" is pronounced as in our word " ore"; thus "los" does not become "loss," 
but is pronounced "lose." The Spanish "z" is practically our "s." The pro- 
nunciations given below the word are in all cases as near an approximation as 
p ssible, though perhaps not always absolute and exact, since in our peculiar and 
wonderful mother-tongue the same plain word, plainly spelled, may be pronounced 
in three or four ways, by the same number of persons, in the same conversation. 

(199) 



200 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Adonde Where to. 

Ah-don-day. 
Agua Caliente.. . Hot water. 

A/i-gua. Ca\-e-atn-tay. 

Alameda Lit. a grove of poplars; a shaded walk. 

. Ah-lah-;«^_y-dah. 

Alamillo A place of poplars. 

Ah-lah-w^^/-yo. 

Albuquerque A family name. 

y^/-boo-ker-kay. 
Alcatraz Pelican. 

Al-cat-ras. 
Algodones .Lit. cottons; cotton lands. 

Al-go-^/ts'-nais. 

Aliso Alder-bush. 

Al-(?^-so. 
Almaden A place of mineral deposits. The word 

A\-mah-datn. is not in common use. 

Alturas Heights. 

Al-/^^-ras. 

Alvarado A launching place for ships: not in 

Alvar-rt;//-do. common use. 

Alviso A view; not in common use. 

Al-^^^-so. 
Amador Lover. 

Ah-may-i/or. 

Arena Sand. 

Ah-r«_>'-nah. 

Arroyo, OR Arroyo Seco. A wash made by water; not a creek or 
Ar-r^-yo Saj-co river, and shallower and smaller than 

a canyon. 

AzusA A provocation; annoyance. The word 

Ah-soo-sah is colloquial. 

Ballona If spelled Ball/na (bal-jr-nah) it would 

Bal-j'^^-nah. mean whale. 



SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 201 

Belen A seige and capture for which the Spanish 

Bd.y-latn. histories claim great glory. 

Bella Vista Pretty View. 

Bat7-ya. Fees-tah. 
Benicia. Should be Venecia; Venice. 

Ben-^^-shah. 
Bernal Proper name. 

Ber-nal. 
Bernalillo Little Bernal. 

Ber-nal-^^/-yo. 
Berros, Los Name of a plant, Berro; water-cress. 

£ay -rose. 
Buenaventura Good fortune; also a frequent proper 

£'wain-ah-vsiin-too-ra.h. name. 

Buena Vista Good View; does not mean " beautiful " 

B'wain-2h Vees-tah. view, but one unobstructed. 

Cajon Caja, a box; cajon, a big box, Cajon Pass, 

Cah-Aone. "box pass." 

Calaveras Plu. The rattlepates; the mad-caps, or 

Cal-ah-z'«_y-ras what we call goings-on; didoes. Used 

modernly only in this sense. 

Canyon Diablo. 

Canyon The Spanish spelling is " canon," and pro- 
nounced can-on by persons not accus- 
tomed. The Span, pronunciation is 
csin-yone; the American can-yon. It 
means the bore of a gun; calibre; a 
groove, in artillery, the gun itself. 
As used ordinarily it means a ravine 
with steep sides between hills or 
mountains, or a deep crack in the 
earth. Canyon Diablo; (De-a/i-blo,) 
Devil's canyon, Canyoncito; {see-to,)< 
Little canyon. 

Canutillo A place of small rushes. 

Can-oo-Zif^Z-yo. 



•203 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Carmelita Name of a flower. 

Carmel-<?-tah. 

Casa Grande Big House. 

Ca/i-sa.h Grau-day. 

Carrizo A kind of reed grass. 

CsiVt-ee-so. 

Cerro Gordo A thick ridge. 

Sair-ro Gor-do. 

Cerillos, Los Plu. small round hills. 

Sair-^(?/-yose. 

Ceritos Little ridges. 

Sair-^-tose. 

Chaves A family name. 

C/ia/i-vais. 
Chico Little. 

C'/ie-co. 
Chino A Chinaman. 

C/ie no. 

Cienega A swamp. 

Se-azH-e-ga.. 
Cimarron An estray ; lost. 

See -mah- rone. 
Colorado Red. 

Co-lo-ra/;-do. 
Cordero .A lamb. 

Cor-^a^-ro. 
CoRONADO A family name. Lit. "The crowned." 

Co-ro-fia/i-do. 
•Corral A pen; an out-door enclosure. 

Cor-ra/. 
CosNiNO Meaning unknown. 

Cos-«^-no. 
CuBERO A cooper. 

'Ku-ifay-ro. 



SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 203 

Cue AMONG A If this word were spelled with a " j " in 

Ku-cah-mon-ga.. the place of the " g," the word would 

mean an uncomplimentary reflection 
on a nun. 
De Luz Lit. of light. 

Day Zoos. 
Del Mar Of the sea. 

Dail Mar. 
Descanso Rest. 

Dsiis-ca/in-so. 
Dos Cabezas Two heads. 

Dose Cah-day-ssiS. 
Dos Palmas Two palms. 

Dose Fahl-mas. 
Dos Valles Two valleys. 

Do.se Val-ya\s. 
El Dorado The golden; in modern use " dorado " 

Ail Y)o-ra/i-do. means gilt, washed, plated. 

Elota Meaning not known. 

Ail-t?-tah. 
El Molino The mill. 

Ail Mo-/^^-no. 
El Monte The wood. 

Ail Mon-\.ay. 

El Paso The pass. — Del Norte (Dail None.) The 

Ail Fah-so pass of the North. 

El Rito The rite; the ceremony. 

Ail Ree-to. 
Encinitas Little oaks. The name a!so expresses a 

Ain-say-«<?-tas variety of the oak. 

Esperanza Hope. 

Ais-per-a«-sa. 
Estrella A star. 

Ais-trail-yah. 
Farrallones Plu. Small peaked islands rismg out of 

Fair-al-^^-nais. the sea. Parol [Yah-role), a beacon. 



^04 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Fresno Ash tree. 

Frais-no. 

Gallinas Plu. Hens. 

Gal-^<?-nas. 

■Garcia A family name: the Spanish equivalent of 

GdiX-ce-ah. Smith or Jones. 

Garrote The Spanish instrument for capital pun- 

Gar-r^-tay. ishment. 

Garvanzo Provincial Sp. A pea; pea-vine or bloom. 

Gar-z'a«-so. 

■Gavilan A hawk. 

Gah-ve-/a//. 

Gaviota A sea-gull. 

Gah-ve-^-tah. 

GoLETA A schooner. 

Go-/«^-tah. 

Graciosa Kind. 

Grah-se-^-sah. 

Granada . . A pomegranate; renowned; powerful; 

Gran-d!,^-dah. fruitful. 

Hermosillo Little beauty. Hermosa (Air-7«^-sah), 

Air-mo-.y^if/-yo. beautiful. 

lIoRNiTos Little ovens; Horno {Or-no), an oven. 

Or-«<?-tose. 
HUALPAI 

IV/ial-psih-e 

IsLETA Little island. Isla {£ees-\2ih), an island, 

Ees-Z^^-tah. 

Indio Indian. 

£en-de-o. 

JiCARiLLO Should be spelled Jacarillo; a braggart, 

Hic-ah-r^^/-yo. a boaster. 

Jimenez A family name. 

He-may-nsLis. 



SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 205 

Jornada A journey; Jornada del Muerto (dail 

Hor-na/i-dah. M'ucr-to), journey of death. 

Las Animas PIu. The souls. 

Lahs A/i-ne-msLS. 

La Canada The Glen; a vale between hills. 

Lah Can-^dJ^-dah. 

Las Casitas ... Plu. The little houses. 

Lahs Cah-.y^-tas. 

Las Cruces The Crosses. 

Lahs 0'^<?-sais. 

Lacuna A lake. 

Lah-^^^i-nah. 

La Joya The jewel. 

Lah Ho-yah. 

La Panza The paunch; the suggestive name of 

Lah J^an-sah. Don Quixote's esquire. 

La Punt a The point. 

Lah J^oon-tah. 

Las Flores The Flowers. 

Lahs J^/o-ra.is. 

La Junta The Junction. 

Lah Ifoon-tah. 

Las Vegas o The Meadows. 

Lahs Vay-gas. 

Lerdo , . . Dull ; obtuse; thick-headed. 

Le^r-do. 

Linda Pretty. 

Zeen-dah. 

LoBOS Plu. Wolves. 

Z^-bose. 

Los Alamos Plu. The poplars. 

Lose ^/?/-ah-mose. 



206 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Los Angeles Plu. The Angels. The name of this- 

Los ^«-hel-ais. city has locally two or three pronun- 

ciations, none of them the Spanish. 
The original name was Nuestra 
Seiiora, Reiiia de Los Angeles. The 
meaning generally given ; " City of 
the Angels," is imaginative. 

Los Berros Plu. The water-cresses. 

Lose Bay-ros>e.. 

Los CuEROS Plu. The hides. 

Lose Quer-ose. 

Los Gatos Plu. The cats. 

Lose Ga/i-tose. 

Los LoMOS Plu. The hills. 

Lose Zo-mose. 

Los LuNAS The Moons; Luna, the moon, is feminine, 

Lose Zoo-nas. and if this name did not express the 

name of a place that is the residence 
of the Luna family it would be L^s 
Lunas. 

Los Medanos Plu. Sand-banks on the sea-shore. 

Lose Ma.y-dati-os. 
Los NiETOS Plu. The grandchildren. 

Lose Nee-rt!-tos. 
Los RoBLES The oaks. 

Lose J?o-h\ais. 
Madera Wood ; general term. 

Mah-day-rah. 
Madron, madrono A kind of tree. 

Mah- drone. 
Manitou Indian ; a name for the Supreme Power. 

Man-ay-to. 
Manuelito Little Emanuel. 

Man-wale-if-to. 
Manzanito Lit. Little apple. A California shrub. 

Man-zahn-^-to. 



SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 307 

Mariposa , . Butterfly. 

Mah-re-/(?-sah. 

Mendocino Lit. A little liar. 

Men-do-^^-no. 

Merced Mercy. 

Met -said. 

Mesilla Little flat-topped hill. Mesa (Afay-sah), 

May-j^^/-yah. from the Spanish word meaning a table, 

is the name of this peculiarly shaped 
hill throughout the south-west. 

Mesquite A shrub of the acacia family growing 

Mes-/:eef. extensively over the whole South- 

west and Mexico. 

MiLPiTAS Lit. A thousand whistles. 

Meel-/>tas. 

Modesto Modest. 

Mo-dat's-to. 

Monte Diablo Devil Mountain. 

Afon-tay Dee-a/i-h\o. 

MoNTECiTO Little Mountain. 

Mo/i-tay-se-to. 

Monterey King's Mountain. 

Mon-tay-r^^. 

MoNTOYAH Meaning not known. 

Mon-/^'-ah. 
Moren A Brown. 

Mo-ray-na. 

N ACiMiENTO Lit. A birth. More especially applied to 

Nah-se-me-d;//2-to the Nativity. 

Navajo Name of an Indian tribe. 

JVav-ah-ho. 

Nog ALES Plu. Walnut-trees. 

No-^:^a/-ais. 
Ollita A little water-jar. Sometimes spelled on 

0\e-ye-tah. maps "Oleta." 

14 



208 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Ona VA Meaning not known, 

0-;/a//-vah. 

Ojio Grande Lit. Big gold. 

Gran-ddLy. 
Ortiz A family name. 

Ox-tees. 
Otero A family name. 

0-iay-xo. 
Pacheco A fainily name. Lit. a harmless little 

Vah-chay-co fellow. 

Pajaro ... A bird; general term. 

Fah-h.3h-xo. 

Pala A wooden shovel. 

Fah-\si\i. 

Pasadena A Spanish phrase pronounced " Pah-so- 

Pas-ah-^oy-nah. <\eh-dain" would mean "Gate of 

Eden " poetically. Many Spanish 
words have been contracted, wrongly 
spelled, mispronounced and misunder 
r stood as badly or worse than this, sup- 
posing this to be the real meaning of a 
name very probably first used by the 
California padres, and afterwards mis- 
pronounced, by ear, by the Americans. 

Paso Robles Oak Pass. 

Fah-so -^^-blais. 
Pecos Freckles. 

Fay-cost. 
Pesc ADERO A fishing-place. 

Fais.cdJn.-day-to. 
PiCACHO Peak. 

Vt-cah-dciO. 
PiEDRA Grande Big rock. 

Pe-a-drah Gran-day. 
PiNivETA A variety of the pine; veined or fat pine. 

Fe-x\a.h-7'ay-ta.h. 



SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 209 

Pinole Parched corn, ground and mixed with 

Fe-no-\a.y. sugar and water as a drink, or used as 

food. The go_^o of South America 
and West Indies. 

PiNON A species of nut-bearing pine. 

Feen-jone. 

Placer The place near a stream where free gold 

'Play-sai'r. is found. Lit. pleasure. 

Plumas Feathers. 

P/oo-mas. 

Poncho A cloak like a square or round blanket 

Fone-cho. with a slit in the centre for the head 

to pass through. 

PoTRERO Lit. a place for raising colts; usually 

Vo-tray-xo. meaning a small stock-farm. 

Presidio A garrison of soldiers; a penitentiary. 

Pray-j-^^-de-o. 

PuENTE A point of land. 

F'wain-iay. 

PuERCO A pig; dirty, soiled, filthy. 

F'wcr-co. 

Rancho, Ranchita, etc. .Our very common western word "ranch " 

is in Spanish a mess, as of soldiers, 
sailors, hunters. Any place where 
there are buildings for shelter in the 
open country would be called a rancho. 

Raton A mouse. This is a case where the usual 

^ah-tone Spanish augmentative termination is 

reversed in meaning. Rata [rah-iah) 
means a rat. 
Rio, Rio Vista, Rio 

Grande, etc A river, river-view, big river. 

Re-ohVees-tay; Gran-day. 

Romero A family name. 

^o-t?iay-xo. 



210 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

RosARio A rosary. 

Ro-sa/i-re-o. 
Sacramento A sacrament. 

Sah- crah-mam-to. 

Salinas Places of salt. 

Sal-^-nas. 
San Andreas San Andreas. 

And-rais. 
San Antonio St. Anthony. 

An-/o/ie-yo. 
San Bernardino St. Bernard. 

Ber-nard-^-no. 

San DiMAs St. Uemas. 

De-mas. 
San Diego St. James. 

De-a-go. 
San Dieguito Little St. James. 

De-a-^c-to. 
San Fernando St. Ferdinand. 

San Gabriel St. Gabriel. 

Gab-re-^?//. 
San Gorgonio. 

Gor-go/ie-yo. 
San Jacinto St. Jacinth. 

YLah-seen-to. 

San Jose St. Joseph. 

Ho-say. 
San Juan St. John. 

San Juan Capistrano. . .St. John the chanter, as nearly as the 
Ca/i-pQCs-tm/i-o. meaning can be rendered. 

San Joaquin San Joaquin. 

H'wah-ieen. 
San Marciat St. Martial. 

Mar-ce-rt/. 



SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 211 

San Mateo St. Matthew. 

Mat-a-o. 
San Miguel... St. Michael. 

Me-gai7. 
San Pablo.. St. Paul. 

/"a/i-hlo. 
San Pascual Holy Easter. 

San Pedro St. Peter. 

I'ay-dro. 
San Rafael St. Raphael. 

Rah-/i?y^-ail. 
San ToM-as . St. Thomas. 

Santa Ana; Anita St. Ann; or Little St. Ann, pronounced 

AA-nah. An-ne-tah. San/^^;/ah, one word. 

Santa Barbara St. Barbara. 

Santa Catalina St. Catherine. 

Cat-ah-/^'-nah. 

Santa Clara St. Clara. 

Santa Cruz Holy Cross. 

Croos. 
Santa Fe Holy Faith. 

J^ay. 
Santa Monica St. Monica. 

Moft-e-ca.h. 
Sapinero Sapino, a kind of pine ; a grove of such. 

Sah-pe-;/a>'-ro. 
Saucilito A little willow. 

Sow-se-/<?-to. 
Sepulvida 

Say-Z^^'Z-ve-dah. 
Sierra Madre Mother Range. 

Se-^/«-rah Jlfad-ra.y. 
Sobrante Rich; wealthy; surplus; overflow. 

So-/>ran-ta.y. 



212 OVERLAND GUIDE. 

Socorro Succor;" relief. 

So-co-ro. 

SoLEDAD Solitude; lonesomeness. 

So-\a.y-dad. 

SoLANA A sunny place; sunshine. 

So-/a/i-na. 
SUPAI 

Su-J>a/i-e. 

Tamalpais. The country of tamales. The tamal is a 

Tam-al-^W/-ees. bit of Mexican cookery. 

Tecalote 

Tay-cal-^-tay. 
Temecula. . 

Ta.y-mec-oo-lsLh. 
Tiburon A shark. 

Te-hoo-rone. 

Tiajuana Tia Juana; aunt Jane. 

Te-w^a-na; one word. 
TlMPAS , 

Teem -pahs. 
Trinidad The Trinity. 

Tre-ne-^a^. 

Tulare A place of rushes. 

Tu-Zare-Si. 

Vacaville. Vaca; a cow. Cowville. 

V.(/i-cah. 
Vallejo A little valley. 

Val-A/y-ho. 

"^^^^ Spanish yard measure; a wand, a switch. 

Var-ah. 

YosEMiTE Said to mean a large grizzly bear. 

Yo-j'^w-e-tay. 
Ysidora Isadore; a woman's name. 

Ee-se-a'i^-rah. 



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-A.BOTJT CREDIXS. 



To sell or not to sell ; | Will bills be paid when due, 



That is the question? 

Whether it is better to sell the lots 

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To sell ; to risk ; perchance to lose ; 

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W. H. HOLABIRD & CO., 

Leading Real Estate Dealers. SAN diego, CALIFORNIA. 



Alfred Toll, Piest. and Gen'l Manager. 
L. A. Reed, Vice-Prest. 



John Ure, Sec'y. 
Alson a. White, Treae. 



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W. B. CLARKE, President. 
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CHAS. S. WHEELER, Vice-President. 
O. P. DICKINSON, 2i Vice-President. 



W.B. Clarke, Chas. S. Wheeler, John Long, John C. Gage, W. A. M. Vaughn, 
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EDWARD E. HOLMES. 

Pres t ard Treasurer. 
WILLIS G MYERS, Vice-President. 
GEORGE M. VAN EVERA, Secretary 



mie 



offices: 

KANFAS CITY. - . MO. 

PORTSMOUTH, ■ N H. 

BELOIT, . - - KANSAS. 



Kcpas (]iti| IpestJijeijt Compttiiii, 

SIXTH AND WYANDOTTE STREETS, 

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CAPITAL PAID, - - $200,000. 



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the first principle of our business. 

CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED. 



T ilES WgO WE fl BEHP COffLEXIOJ 



avrXTST "CTSE 

POZZONI'S 

MEDICATED 

COMPLEXION 

POWDER. 




It imparts a brilliant transpa- 
rency to the skin. Removes all 
pimples, freckles and discolor- 
ations, and makes the skin deli- 
cately soft and beautiful. It con- 
tains no lime, -white lead or arse- 
nic. In three shades: pink or 
flesh, -white and brunette. 

For sale 1:7 all Drugsists 
as! Fancy Qoods Sealers everywhere. 

USE NO OTHER. 

Beware of Imitations. 



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014 754 328 1* 



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